From the Principal

The Principal's Note
3 September, 2024

Close Encounters of the Academic Kind

At the start of a new semester and academic year, we are thrilled to welcome a new cohort of Fellows
to the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study. The welcoming of new Fellows is a moment of excite-
ment and expectation. Each scholar brings with them new expertise, experiences, and insights that will
in one way or other influence the minds of their new colleagues and collaboration partners. Being open
to what kinds of ideas and knowledge may emerge from these encounters in turn opens up possibilities
for career-changing decisions or even life-changing moves. Seeds to new projects are grown, novel
collaborations emerge, and new friendships are cultivated.

Close academic encounters may be evermore vital in a contemporary world of societal uncertainty and
unrest, political upheaval, democratic challenges, and threats to academic freedom. In the vast and
varying landscape of knowledge production and learning, institutes for advanced study (IASs) offer a
sense of place, a site for close encounters, that adds a significant dimension to the often dispersed and
placeless academic networks. One of the cornerstones of IASs is the capacity to foster a sense of aca-
demic and human attachment and belonging. And these are not provincial, self-enclosed, ivory-towers
of knowledge seekers, but global, vibrant microcosms of dialogue and experimentation. Only in dynamic
relation to the surrounding world can a sense of place be cultivated.

Here at the Swedish Collegium we are committed to our mission of providing fertile conditions for aca-
demic encounters and knowledge advancement on longstanding and contemporary questions. In the year
to come, we will continue to work on formats and genres of encounters and engagements; seeking ways
to strengthen our interactions with other institutes, universities, and relevant stakeholders, and to encourage
diverse forms of engagement amongst our Fellows and academics around us, as well as with broader publics.

At this point in time, it has been made clear that free, curiosity-based research is what stands the best chance
of achieving novel insights and robust knowledge that may spur innovations and be of relevance for the
advancement of society at large. It should come as no surprise that areas such as bioethics, climate history,
life sciences, or artificial intelligence – to mention only a few – have emerged in close cooperation between
scholars of different disciplinary origins and are nurtured by cross-faculty encounters.

This fall, we are happy to welcome the first Fellows in the new programme The Human Past, focused on
enhancing our understanding of human history from the viewpoints of a wide range of disciplines, such as
archaeology, population genetics and historical linguistics. This has been made possible by a new, collabo-
rative set-up with The Center for the Human Past, established this year as a Centre of Excellence funded by
the Swedish Research Council. The Human Past Fellowship Programme allows both early-career scholars
and more senior ones to be Fellows-in-residence at the Collegium and collaborate with the Center for the
Human Past. We are also proud to launch the new SCAS-Nordic Fellowship Programme, with funding
from Riksbankens Jubileumsfond. The programme is open to scholars who hold a position at a university
in the Nordic countries. The purpose of the programme is to strengthen the ties between the Swedish
research community and Nordic colleagues. With these new initiatives, as with all our fellowship pro-
grammes, we aim to foster a collaborative environment where early-stage and established scholars can
converge across a wide range of disciplines. This reflects our commitment to study our collective and
global humanity in all its variety.

Over the coming months, the Collegium will also be spearheading a number of initiatives that reflect the
significance of a place of learning for engaging with our global future. It is our conviction that the ad-
ancement of knowledge may contribute not only to new social and technological innovations, but also to
the advancement of democracy and inclusive societies. We will continue to provide a place for discussions
about academic freedom and democracy, and of the role of knowledge in a drastically changing political
and digital context.

As an IAS, we continue to nurture the integrity of free, curiosity-based research and to uphold the basic
principles associated with academic freedom. This is also a recurrent theme in our international network
of institutes for advanced study, SIAS, and in our European network, NetIAS. So, we are not alone in
this endeavour. Close encounters of the academic kind are undoubtedly vital for the advancement of
knowledge.

Stay tuned for further information on upcoming events!