Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study (NDIAS)

The Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study (NDIAS) promotes issue-engaged, inclusive, and interdisciplinary study of questions that affect our ability to lead valuable, meaningful lives. Each year, the NDIAS convenes a diverse group of faculty fellows, graduate students, and undergraduate scholars to participate in a residential research community, with topics organized around an annual theme. The NDIAS also organizes regular academic programming—including research seminars, public lectures, symposia, and conferences—on the theme.

Three features define the vision of the NDIAS:

• Issue-engaged: The Institute brings high-level scholarship about value and meaning into conversation with actual, timely research in the humanities, sciences, and social sciences.
• Inclusive: The Institute cultivates a community of researchers at all levels—from undergraduates to full professors—in a dialogue of unique and diverse perspectives and methods.
• Interdisciplinary: The Institute supports researchers from any discipline—including artists, scientists, and scholars in the humanities—and brings them into conversation with each other to advance individual projects and promote productive collaboration.

The Institute lives out the Catholic commitment to a timeless and comprehensible truth that all excellent scholarship seeks to discern. Research efforts in the NDIAS are optimistic about the ability of scholars to produce insights that consider multiple perspectives to advance the good.

HISTORY

Founded in 2008 by Notre Dame Research, the NDIAS is a University-wide institute that fosters research focused on major questions, enriched by engaged interdisciplinary collaboration. 

The Institute has been led by several notable faculty, including:

• Meghan Sullivan, Wilsey Family Professor of Philosophy; current director, 2019-present.
• Brad S. Gregory, Professor of History and Dorothy G. Griffin Collegiate Chair; director, 2013-2019.
• Robert Sullivan, Professor of History and Associate Vice President for Academic Mission Support; interim director, 2014-2015.
• Vittorio Hösle, Paul G. Kimball Professor of Arts and Letters in the Department of German and Russian Languages and Literatures; inaugural director, 2008-2013.

Since the Institute’s inaugural fellowship class in 2010, more than 130 faculty and graduate students have served as NDIAS Fellows. Fellowships are highly competitive and the NDIAS receives 250-400 applications annually from academics in a range of top-ranked international research universities and liberal arts colleges. Applicants awarded fellowships at the NDIAS have come with projects in a range of disciplines, including the arts, engineering, the humanities, law, medicine, and the natural and social sciences.