Introduction


The Institute of Advanced Study (IAS) at Durham University, based in the early eighteenth-century Cosin’s Hall, brings together some of the most eminent and creative scholars, artists and public figures from around the world. The IAS is one of only a few Institutes that embraces the full spectrum of disciplines, reaching right across the arts, social sciences and the sciences. It allows Fellows whose interests are very different to come together and experiment with new forms of collaboration. The dialogues across disciplines that it engenders not only compare different disciplinary perspectives but also create new intellectual linkages between them.


The Institute’s approach remains distinctive: it fosters engagement in research organised around broad annual themes of major academic, public and policy significance such as; the Legacy of Charles Darwin (2006/07); Modelling (2007/08); Being Human (2008/09); Water (2009/10); Futures (2010/11); Futures II (2011/12); Time (2012/13) and this year, Light. The IAS’s themes have broad interdisciplinary appeal; they lie at the cutting edge of research; they are complex, sometimes controversial, and they require attention from multiple disciplinary and cultural perspectives. Typically each is the centre of attention for one academic year, enabling an intense short-term focus on urgent issues, while also providing a platform for longer-term research and creative development. Each theme is interpreted in its broadest sense, scientifically, symbolically, legally, philosophically, artistically, politically, economically and sociologically.


The focal point of the IAS is a programme of work associated with the annual research theme. At the Institute’s core lies a Fellowship programme that allows it to gather together some of the world’s finest scholars. Every year, two cohorts of outstanding individuals are invited to spend three months at the IAS. During their 3-month stay in Durham, Fellows advance their own research, engage with departments, deliver public lectures and seminars, and, above all, join an international community of researchers to address the IAS theme selected for that year. They are invited to contribute to a rich programme of conferences, workshops, and seminars organised by colleagues in Durham to address different aspects of the annual theme, and they leave the IAS with a publication for the Institute’s E-journal Insights, which is based on Fellows’ new thinking and the dialogues developed during their time at the Institute. For the 2013/14 academic year the IAS is fortunate to have attracted a group of fellows from a variety of backgrounds and countries to address the annual theme of Light. Their biographies and plans are summarised in this programme.


In supporting the Light theme, the aim of the IAS is to stimulate thinking. Light plays a central role in the physics of the universe, in the sustenance of life, in the technology that drives societies, in physical and emotional wellbeing, in perceptions of the environment, and in religious and literary metaphor. This theme will develop links between the physics of light, the perception of light, the emotive effects of light and the representation of light in theology, philosophy and literature.


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