News & Stories
Jen K. AlVarez Hughes Appointed Managing Director of Institute for Advanced Study
We are delighted to announce that Jen K. AlVarez Hughes has been appointed the next managing director of the Institute for Advanced Study. Dr. AlVarez Hughes will succeed Susannah Smith, who will serve as acting director of the IAS while Bianet Castellanos, IAS director, is on sabbatical for the 2024-25 academic year.
Apply Now: Open Rivers Seeks Graduate Student Committee Members
Open Rivers: Rethinking Water, Place & Community welcomes participants from any university and any graduate program to join its new Graduate Student Committee. Members will learn practical professional development skills while exploring public scholarship in their own practice. Apply by September 9, 2024!
Save the Date: 2024-25 (In)Justice Series on Just Policing
Another robust season of conversations awaits you in the 2024–25 (In)Justice Series presented by the Institute for Advanced Study. We are pleased to share that next year's events will partner with Andrew W. Mellon-funded Sawyer Seminar on “Just Policing.” In conversation with community activists and leading scholars, we will interrogate policing across the globe, its histories and futures.
Spring 2024 Letter from the Director, In Solidarity
Bianet Castellanos, director of the Institute for Advanced Study, closes the Spring 2024 semester and looks ahead to the 2024-25 academic year. Highlights include the (In)Justice Series on Just Policing, and longtime Managing Director Susannah Smith stepping in as acting director while Castellanos takes a one-year sabbatical to pursue her research on settler colonialism and Mexican migration.
Announcing Issue 26 of Open Rivers: Commitment
We are pleased to announce that the twenty-sixth issue of Open Rivers:Rethinking Water, Place & Community is now available. In addition, Open Rivers is currently inviting proposals for columns for our 2025 issue on Rights, Conflict, and Water. We seek contributions that foreground the complexities and intersections of water rights and water conflicts in myriad contexts.
Fernando Burga Discusses Urban Food Deserts on UROC's Rules of Engagement
Fernando Burga, former IAS Residential Faculty Fellow, was recently a guest on the Rules of Engagement podcast produced by the Urban Research and Outreach-Engagement Center (UROC). Burga, an Assistant Professor in the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, joined host and UROC executive director Makeda Zulu to discuss his research into fast food and urban food deserts.
Announcing the 2024-25 IAS Research and Creative Collaboratives
We are delighted to announce the new and renewing Research and Creative Collaboratives at the Institute for Advanced Study! Collaboratives represent some of the most synergistic and innovative work across the University of Minnesota system. Each Collaborative receives up to $12,000 as well as administrative support from the Institute for Advanced Study to further their work.
Announcing the 2024 MnDRIVE Human in the Data Summer Graduate Fellows
Eight graduate students from the University of Minnesota have been selected to participate in the Summer 2024 MnDRIVE Human in the Data Fellowship. Their research projects will explore the humanistic implications of data.
University of Minnesota Receives $75,000 Seed Grant to Partner with Tribal Colleges to Transform STEM Education for Indigenous Students
An ambitious new planning project aims to radically remake the role of predominantly white institutions in STEM graduate education by centering Tribal Colleges and Universities in tribal land- and self-determination-based science training.
Isaac Espósto: Mapping the Architectures of Borderland Confinement
For Isaac Espósto, a 2023–2024 Interdisciplinary Doctoral Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study, the borders and walls along the U.S. and Mexico represent far more than just territorial boundaries. Their research looks at how the very architecture and spatial design of the borderlands purposefully produce categories of race, gender, and citizenship status that enable violence and determine whose mobility is criminalized or allowed.