IAS Scholars on Discovery in the Doing
The Institute has long been home to unconventional forms of discovery—and thinkers who rely on methods beyond textbooks, notes, or blackboards to uncover new understandings of the world around them. From anthropologists navigating physical ruins to historians tracing the history of techniques of capturing human movement, many IAS scholars rely on an active, often tactile engagement with the world. For these researchers, discovery is not a sudden “eureka” moment: it is a deeply iterative and practice-based pursuit.
This animating force is evident in the arts, too: this spring, the campus has been set alight by a series of musical programming titled “The Art of Collaboration.” The slate of events, at turns experimental and classical, includes a number of lecture demonstrations that pair exposition with live performance, modeling how knowledge can emerge through the act of doing.
In this installment of Campus Conversation, scholars from the Institute’s Schools of Historical Studies and Social Science discuss what discovery through process means to them. Through reflections on the intersection of their work and craftsmanship, practice, performance, and the arts, these thinkers illuminate the thrilling range of what the pursuit of knowledge can look like—and the many wells from which insight can spring.
“Hands-on research is what I find most exciting about being an anthropologist. Fieldwork is a permanent source of surprises, challenges, and thought-provoking experiences that can change the whole direction of your research. A good example is my fieldwork in northern Argentina for my book Rubble, which taught me to look at ruins differently: not as dead objects from the past, but as part of the living and contemporary senses of place of the people living around them. The conceptualization of ruins as rubble that I developed in the book emerged from memorable fieldwork experiences that helped me unlearn my own assumptions about what ‘a ruin’ is.”
Gastón Gordillo
Wolfensohn Family Member (2025–26), School of Social Science
“Focusing on discovery through process undermines the idea that what we know, or what we can do, results from moments of individual insight. One way that has played out in my work is in the recognition that collaborations between chemists and glassblowers were essential to chemistry’s nineteenth-century development. I identified the importance of glassblowing in chemistry by studying print and manuscript sources. But collaborating with a master scientific glassblower, Tracy Drier, transformed my understanding of how working in glass impacted chemistry, opening new historical questions about skill, lab safety, and the interaction between innovation and standardization that is crucial to science. Together, Drier and I have brought scientific glassblowing to notice, not just as a historical craft but as a living tradition that remains essential today.”
Catherine Jackson
Elizabeth and J. Richardson Dilworth Member (2026), School of Historical Studies
“I am now a historian of science and technology, but I spent my formative years in a ballet studio. That experience of daily, structured, joyful movement was a profound one; it shaped the cadences of my writing and thinking and undoubtedly drew me to the subject of my book. Titled Making Movement Modern, it explores how and why a variety of institutions and groups—from dancers to scientists and engineers to management consultants, politicians, and psychologists—became fixated on recording, analyzing, and shaping human movement in the twentieth century.
Though movement is often thought of as natural or unmediated, my dance training made me viscerally aware of the many methods by which movement patterns are actively created. It also attuned me to why the methods of that construction matter, not just to the individual, but also to society at large.”
Whitney Laemmli
Member (2023–24), School of Historical Studies
“My project, titled ‘SEI,’ developed with the phenomenal guitarist Kaki King, built on the constraints, creativity, and unique processes that live within collaboration. It became a story about collaboration told through collaboration—exploring the physical tension and possibilities between two guitarists. We wanted our body movement, together and apart, to shape the narrative and dictate the music. Constantly rethinking how to approach and strum the guitar in new ways, we also played sixteen guitars at once like ‘athletes,’ which created the intense track ‘Circuit.’ Practicing from opposite corners of the room, back-to-back, we searched for ways to sync sound and motion, allowing every idea to move us forward. From that beautiful openness and freedom emerged our language of ‘SEI.’ This is a hands-on experience and collaboration grounded in attention to our bodies, dedicated freedom, and attention to synchronicity.”
Tamar Eisenman
Visitor (2025–26), School of Historical Studies
“I research the production process of ancient Greek ceramics through long-term observation in the workshops of contemporary potters and vase painters who recreate ancient Greek shapes.
Timing is central in ceramic production: potters must carefully coordinate the creation of individual components—such as the foot, rim, and handles—to ensure even drying and optimal attachment. This timing depends on form and seasonality. As they move through each stage, the potters consider the drying periods required for clay slips of varying consistencies. Since ceramics production operated on a large scale, effective time management also meant producing one shape in batches and carrying out the same forming or decorating step across multiple pieces rather than completing one vessel from start to finish before beginning another. This technologically and economically driven approach to project organization has significantly influenced my own research perspective, recognizing that ancient potters were not only skilled artists but also savvy entrepreneurs.”
Eleni Hasaki
Hetty Goldman Member (2025), School of Historical Studies
