About us

Loughborough University’s Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS) builds on a long-established record of international research collaboration that reaches across all fields and disciplines. In character, we maintain the ethos of the first Institute of Advanced Studies, founded in 1930 at Princeton, whose first Director, Abraham Flexner articulated thus:

The Institute should be small and plastic (that is flexible); […] it should be simple, comfortable, quiet without being monastic or remote; […] and it should provide the facilities, the tranquility, and the time requisite to fundamental inquiry into the unknown.1

Loughborough’s IAS hosts Residential and Visiting Fellows from around the world who engage with us through a wide range of research activities during the year. We organise annual Themes and, latterly, Research Summits (for 2023-4, Gestation: Bodies, Technologies, Ecologies, Justice), periodic Roundtables and Spotlight Series (e.g. Planetary Feminisms and Pacifism and Nonviolence), and a varied schedule of international and interdisciplinary research seminars and workshops delivered by Fellows associated with our Open Programme. In 2020, we launched the IAS Residential Fellowship programme, designed to bring exceptional international scholars, artists, writers and public intellectuals to Loughborough for month-long research residencies, and we are pleased to be welcoming another stellar cohort to the campus during 2023-24. 

All of our public-facing research seminars and workshops can be engaged in person or online and we host an excellent collection of recorded presentations on our website. Browse our Video Library to enjoy some of the seminars presented by IAS Fellows over the years.

We welcome conversations with colleagues from within the University and internationally who might be interested in opportunities for participating in the Institute’s programmes and making connections with Loughborough’s vibrant research community through our events. We look forward to welcoming you to the IAS!

Professor Ksenia Chmutina
Director of the Institute of Advanced Studies

1. Abraham Flexner, Mission statement of the Institute for Advanced Study by founding Director Abraham Flexner, Organization Meeting, October 10, 1930
[https://www.ias.edu/about/mission-history]