Institute Receives Five-Year $1.1 Million Grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
The Institute for Advanced Study has received a five-year $1.1 million grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation that enables Assistant Professors to come to the Institute as Members in the School of Historical Studies. The grant is a renewal of previous, sustained support from the Foundation, and demonstrates the joint commitment of the Institute and Foundation to assisting academics at a critical point in their careers. The funds will be used to provide Mellon Fellowships to scholars who have not yet achieved tenure in their home institutions.
Funding for this program from the Foundation began in 1996, and the renewal will provide unconstrained opportunities for emerging scholars while enriching the intellectual life at the Institute and the broader academic community. The program fosters colleagueship between the Mellon Fellows, who are at the Institute during a fairly early stage in their academic careers, and the Institute's permanent Faculty and the more senior visiting scholars, further enhancing the experience for these Fellows. Historically, the Fellows have made exceptional strides in their fields of study. A rigorous and thorough appointment process ensures that they are among the most outstanding candidates in their fields.
"The Institute is very grateful to The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for its support of this important program, which provides opportunities for scholars at a crucial time in their careers," stated Peter Goddard, Director of the Institute. "It has brought individuals of exceptional promise and achievement to the Institute, who have contributed greatly to our academic community."
Many former Mellon Fellows believe that this support was instrumental in advancing their academic careers. One former Fellow (2006-07), Matthew Stanley, currently an Associate Professor at New York University, exemplifies the success of the program. "As a junior scholar, the opportunity to be a Member of the IAS was immensely valuable for a number of reasons, though two stand out. First, dedicated research time before being evaluated for tenure is extremely helpful, especially in such a productive environment as this. Second, the opportunity to work with senior scholars from a variety of institutions and fields provides resources and an intellectual context unmatched anywhere."
Brooke Holmes, another former Mellon Fellow (2007-08) now an Assistant Professor at Princeton University, had a similarly positive experience. "I found my year at the School of Historical Studies as a recipient of the Mellon Fellowship to be enormously beneficial, both to my research and to my intellectual growth. The community of scholars at the Institute offered the perfect balance between isolation and engagement-I cannot think of a better place to have spent the year."
Since the inception of the program more than a decade ago, some 27 scholars have participated, studying in fields ranging from French music and manuscripts in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries to the transmission of learning in the medieval Islamic world, and from the intellectual history of Western Europe to the early development of Chinese literary thought.
About The Mellon Foundation
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, a not-for-profit corporation under the laws of the State of New York, is the result of the consolidation on June 30, 1969 of the Old Dominion Foundation into the Avalon Foundation with the name of the Avalon Foundation being changed to The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The Foundation makes grants in five core program areas: Higher education and scholarship; libraries and scholarly communication; museums and art conservation; performing arts; and conservation and the environment. For more information, visit www.mellon.org.
About the Institute for Advanced Study
The Institute for Advanced Study is one of the world’s leading centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. The Institute exists to encourage and support curiosity-driven research in the sciences and humanities—the original, often speculative thinking that produces advances in knowledge that change the way we understand the world. Work at the Institute takes place in four Schools: Historical Studies, Mathematics, Natural Sciences and Social Science. It provides for the mentoring of scholars by a permanent Faculty of approximately 30, and it ensures the freedom to undertake research that will make significant contributions in any of the broad range of fields in the sciences and humanities studied at the Institute.
The Institute, founded in 1930, is a private, independent academic institution located in Princeton, New Jersey. Its more than 6,000 former Members hold positions of intellectual and scientific leadership throughout the academic world. Thirty-three Nobel Laureates and 40 out of 56 Fields Medalists, as well as many winners of the Wolf and MacArthur prizes, have been affiliated with the Institute.