Skip to main content
Institute of Advanced Study
External shot of Institute of Advanced study at Cosin's Hall

Future IAS projects

We are committed to supporting and developing exciting ideas with potential

Across a 3-year project cycle, we support PIs to deliver their goals and objectives

Year 1 - Pre-project year (developing preliminary ideas and planning for the project start)
Year 2 - Project year (joined by visiting Fellows for an intensive term of research collaboration)
Year 3 - Post project year (building on outcomes of Y1 and Y2)

Our Major Projects for next year (2026/27 and 2027/28) are:

Mercy and Justice

Tackling the pressing problem of mercy’s potential for harm.
people holding hands - image courtesy of iStock

Community as an Enabler of Scientific Progress and Innovation

Investigating the role of communities as drivers of scientific progress
people sat around a table image courtesy of iStock

Circulatory Materials

Challenging/critically recasting a growing body of work on the ‘circular economy’ premised on extending 'life-cycles' of products and maintaining material circulation
used batteries couresty of iStock

Reconceptualising Resistance

Exploring disciplinary and methodological orientations; divergence between empirical, theoretical, and normative framings of resistance and the role of the academy
Women with megaphone image courtesy of iStock

Futures of Democracy

Exploring how people respond to democratic decline, especially in post-industrial communities like County Durham where traditional systems feel ineffective.
Hand of a person casting a ballot at a polling station during voting

Colonial Archives, Endangered Heritage, Future Imaginaries: the Sudan archive at 70

Addressing an urgent and unresolved question: what challenges, possibilities, and responsibilities do colonial archives face at our present moment?
Palace Green Library exterior

Out of Service: engaging with infrastructure rupture, failure and collapse

Examining failure in maritime, digital, & financial infrastructure; how it’s recognised & managed, using maritime networks to model risks, assess prevention & containment
Aerial view of a high-tech smart port with digital technology overlays and ships in the ocean

The Quantum - Classical Boundary: understanding, concepts, and language

This project explores how quantum effects persist at large scales and how classical behaviour emerges in large systems.
Abstract pink atomic or molecular structure on blue background

TempoSphere: time inheritance as a cross-disciplinary paradigm and testbed for temporally just institutional design

Exploring how time pressures affect students, using tools to visualise inequalities. A pilot to build a framework for understanding these inequalities and implications
university students walking up and down stairs