School of Historical Studies, Institute for Advanced Study
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| School of Historical Studies, Institute for Advanced Study | |
|---|---|
| Name | School of Historical Studies |
| Type | Research institute |
| Established | 1935 |
| Director | Peter Brown |
| Location | Princeton, New Jersey |
| Parent institution | Institute for Advanced Study |
School of Historical Studies, Institute for Advanced Study
The School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study is a research division devoted to advanced historical scholarship and long-term inquiry into past societies, personalities, and institutions. Founded during the interwar period alongside the Institute for Advanced Study, it has hosted scholars whose work intersects with projects on Constantine I, Charlemagne, Ibn Khaldun, Niccolò Machiavelli, and Max Weber. Visiting members have included historians engaged with topics from the Peloponnesian War to the Cold War and with sources ranging from cuneiform inscriptions to manuscripts from the Vatican Library.
History
The School was established in 1935 with support from patrons associated with Abraham Flexner and Louis Bamberger, emerging in a landscape shaped by émigré scholars from Weimar Republic Germany and intellectual migrations prompted by the Nazi Party. Early connections included scholars studying Renaissance, Byzantine Empire, Ottoman Empire, and Qing dynasty histories, while later decades saw engagements with research on the French Revolution, American Civil War, Meiji Restoration, and decolonization processes following World War II. The School hosted seminars and collaborations linked to projects on Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and archival work drawing on collections from the British Museum, Bibliothèque nationale de France, and the Library of Congress.
Mission and Research Focus
The School's mission emphasizes sustained, original research into temporal, regional, and thematic histories, encouraging comparative work across fields such as studies of ancient Rome, medieval Europe, Islamic Golden Age, imperial China, and early modern Atlantic world. Research agendas have engaged with primary sources like Dead Sea Scrolls, Domesday Book, Magna Carta, and diplomatic correspondence tied to the Treaty of Westphalia and the Treaty of Versailles. The School supports inquiry into biography and prosopography involving figures such as Augustus, Charlemagne, Genghis Khan, Akbar, Elizabeth I, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Abraham Lincoln, and fosters comparative methods used by scholars of Annales School historiography, microhistory, and intellectual histories of figures like Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Immanuel Kant.
Organization and Faculty
The School comprises permanent faculty, visiting professors, and a rotating membership of fellows drawn from institutions including Harvard University, University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, Columbia University, Princeton University, Yale University, University of Chicago, Stanford University, and international centers such as the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Max Planck Society, Scuola Normale Superiore, and University of Tokyo. Directors and affiliated scholars have included historians connected to studies of Pliny the Elder, Tacitus, Ibn Battuta, Marco Polo, Machiavelli, Niccolò Machiavelli, Hannah Arendt, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Theodor Mommsen. Administrative structures coordinate with the Institute for Advanced Study's overarching offices, and the School liaises with libraries and archives such as Harvard University Library, Bodleian Library, and the National Archives (United Kingdom).
Programs and Fellowships
The School administers fellowships for advanced research, including residential fellowships attracting scholars working on projects from Homer to the Soviet Union, and supports interdisciplinary initiatives intersecting with departments studying classical philology, art history (e.g., work on Giotto and Michelangelo), religious studies (e.g., on Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas), and legal-historical inquiries into codes like the Code of Hammurabi and the Napoleonic Code. Fellowship cohorts often include investigators producing monographs on topics such as the Black Death, the Transatlantic Slave Trade, the Indian Rebellion of 1857, and the Spanish Civil War. Programs also host collaborations with funders and centers including the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Guggenheim Foundation, and international research councils.
Publications and Conferences
Faculty and fellows have organized conferences and workshops linked to themes like late antiquity, medieval scholasticism, early modern diplomatic history, and modern revolutions, attracting participants researching Material culture from Pompeii to Angkor Wat and political histories of the Habsburg Monarchy, Mughal Empire, Tokugawa shogunate, and United States of America. The School's community produces working papers, edited volumes, and proceedings that appear in series from presses such as Princeton University Press, Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, and Harvard University Press, and contributes to journals including The American Historical Review, Past & Present, Journal of Medieval History, and Speculum.
Notable Members and Alumni
Notable scholars associated with the School include those who have written influential works on figures and events such as Herodotus, Thucydides, Tacitus, Edward Gibbon, Jacob Burckhardt, Fernand Braudel, Marc Bloch, Carlo Ginzburg, Natalie Zemon Davis, Geoffrey Parker, Christopher Browning, E.P. Thompson, Eric Hobsbawm, Mircea Eliade, Paul Cartledge, Jill Lepore, Jared Diamond, Simon Schama, Caroline Elkins, Annales School affiliates, and many others whose scholarship has engaged archives from Venice to Tehran and topics from the Reformation to decolonization.