A Welcome from the Directors


2010-11 saw the Institute celebrate its fifth anniversary as well as cultivating and disseminating new thinking around the theme of ‘Futures.’ This landmark gave the IAS occasion to reflect on five years of continued development, solidifying and enhancing the Institute’s reputation as a creative force that catalyses and sustains important ideas and lines of research. Such reflection was also encouraged by a five-year review of the IAS, which resulted in a report whose commendations and recommendations have been carefully studied by the Institute.


There were changes in the composition of the Institute’s personnel. The IAS said farewell to Professor Ash Amin, its inaugural and inspirational Executive Director, who left for a chair at Cambridge, and its excellent Administrator Catherine Paine, who is now working in the Colleges Division. It was delighted by the appointment of its new Executive Director, Professor Veronica Strang (from 1 May 2012); Professor Strang was a former Fellow of the IAS, under the ‘Water’ theme (2009-10). It was also pleased to welcome its new Administrator (from 1 January 2012), Linda Crowe, and a new


Director for Arts and Humanities (from 1 September 2011), Professor Barbara Graziosi. Professor Michael O’Neill served as acting Executive Director until 30 April 2012. The IAS also welcomed staff helping it to deliver its COFUND Fellowship programme (Simon Litchfield, the COFUND Assistant Administrator and Karen Snowdon the COFUND Assistant Secretary) and Carmen Thompson, its new Development Executive. Carmen is helping the IAS to raise its public profile and realise its fund-raising ambitions.


The 2010-11 theme ‘Futures’ resonated strongly across Durham’s academic community and led to the introduction of a rich and diverse programme of activities across the year. The theme sought to stimulate thinking on the future, on the question of what happens next. Artists summon the future (they sing it to life, paint it into existence, write it into being); doom tellers deny it; modellers predict it; business invents it; individuals approach it; the dying fear it; religions prepare and even hope for it; fortunes hang on it: what is the future all about? The theme was underpinned, as in previous years, by the IAS Fellowship programme, which brought together scholars, intellectuals, and public figures to collaborate on ‘Futures’. The Fellowship programme lies at the heart of the IAS, working across the disciplines, in the Colleges, and with other University Research Institutes. It helps to shape Durham University’s research


Director’s Introduction


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