Nantes IAS

Launched in 2008, the primary mission of the Nantes Institute for Advanced Study is to assist scholars in their intellectual creativity and to help them bring their innovative projects to a successful conclusion. Its main ambition is to widen studies and human sciences to views different than those expressed by the Western academics. Instead of considering other major civilizations as mere subject of study or objectives for missionaries, the Institute aspires to create a new style of intellectual relationship between the countries of the ‘north’ and ‘south’. The socalled "developed" countries (North America, Europe, Australia and Japan) have until recently dominated the social sciences, treating "the rest" of the world - that is, 85% of the world’s population today - more as objects of inquiry or as students than as real partners.

The goal of the IAS-Nantes implies that the small academic community that will gather every year at the Institute be composed of scholars with widely differing intellectual and cultural baggage but who share the same type of complexity and whose projects have enough elements in common. However, research projects do not themselves have to have a "North-South" dimension.

Scientific life at the Institute

The selected applicants will join a group of 10 to 15 fellows selected for the quality and originality of their work. Throughout their stay at the IAS-Nantes, fellows are free to organize their work and their time at their convenience. However, they are asked to commit to convene a seminar open to all the fellows, and present his current research. Every fellow has to participate in the three weekly meals shared with all the other fellows.

Besides these commitments, fellows have the opportunity to engage with the scientific community in Nantes and the Région des Pays de la Loire through events, lectures and workshops organized during the year in collaboration with former IAS-Nantes fellows and/or scientific partners. They have also the opportunity to connect with the scientific, artistic and cultural life in the city and its surroundings.

Nantes is located in Western France, one hour from the Atlantic coast and two hours from Paris by TGV. The IAS- Nantes is located at the heart of the city, in a modern building on the banks of the Loire river. The facilities include equipped offices for researchers, conferences and seminar rooms, an amphitheater and a library. The private apartments (ranging from 1 to 3 bedrooms to welcome families) are located next door to the institute. Fellows meet 3 times a week to share meals in the restaurant loggia overlooking the Loire River. The staff assists the Fellow into the preparation of their stay.

Fellows are offered top quality services and access to the library Julien Gracq situated in the building and furnished with a vast collection of books and archives, as well as an online access to a large array of digital documentations and inter-libraries book loan service.

Applications from all candidates are welcome, with no restrictions on academic discipline or research themes. However, since its creation, the IAS-Nantes privileges research into the “dogmatic underpinnings of human societies”, that is, into what in the meaning which a society assigns to human life lies beyond proof.

In this frame, the IAS-Nantes tries to develop the following thematic fields:

• Humanization of work; legal and social definitions of work and of the place of the worker in society
• Landscapes and ecology, in particular tensions between local traditions and international norms
• Contested histories (national and international identities, heritage of slavery and colonialism)
• Academic freedom, freedom of research and analysis of all forms of domination and violence that impede the development of academic work