Institutes of Advanced Study at four Matariki Universities, including the Durham IAS, are offering their communities as home for academic visitors travelling between Matariki partners.

We are now launching our call for 2026/27 Major Projects. We are inviting applications for Major Projects which should be genuinely interdisciplinary, innovative and ambitious. We encourage projects that have the potential to build towards research of the scale and ambition suited to large programme or centre type funding. All projects must be led by two academics in two different faculties with a wider team ideally involving collaboration across a broad range of disciplines. 

Pete McKenzie has been awarded the 2025 Sir Harry Evans Global Fellowship in Investigative Journalism.

In addition to support for large scale projects, we remain very keen to assist research conversations, workshops, and network building which have the potential to develop into major projects in the future. We therefore invite colleagues to apply for small scale funding (up-to £1500) to help the early-stage development of ambitious interdisciplinary projects during 2024/25.

The IAS welcomed its Michaelmas Fellows to Durham earlier this week to work with Durham colleagues on two major IAS projects.

Find out about current, and future funding calls, as well ongoing collaborations, news from former Fellows and major IAS projects, and forthcoming events through our Term Card

The IAS is delighted to share the wonderful news that the Director of the Institute, Professor Alex Easton, has been elected as the next president of the European Brain and Behaviour Society (EBBS).

Our first Sir Harry Evans Fellow, Waylon Cunningham, is part of a Reuters reporting team to win a Pulitzer Prize - the most prestigious awards in journalism.

Our first ever Sir Harry Evans Global Fellow is part of a team of Reuters journalists to win a prestigious award for exposing wrongdoing in Elon Musk’s business empire.

After a busy Epiphany term, we have still some exciting events coming up, and our latest issues of Transformations gives you a chance to catch up with some familiar faces in the IAS.

Social media, AI and 'fake news' are among the many challenges facing journalism today. Ahead of an IAS and South College expert panel event on 5th March (2.30pm) to discuss the future for journalism with Bridget Kendall, Jo Adetunji, Monica Grady and Ian O'Flynn, our own expert, Prof Tim Luckhurst shares his thoughts ahead of our joint event.

The IAS supports, promotes and grows new and creative interdisciplinary ideas that transform our perspectives in challenging and provocative ways. We provide time, space, and resources to exchange/integrate ideas, knowledge and skills. We are a home to an inclusive, diverse and supportive community of scholars from Durham University and across the world. We are now launching our call for 2025/26 Major Projects – an investment of up to £55,000 per project in major interdisciplinary research ideas