About

The Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH) was founded in July 2015. It seeks to promote high level research in traditional humanities disciplines such as history, philosophy, and literature, while also engaging with more recent developments in the humanities, including cultural studies, communication, and science communication. The Institute consists of a number of full-time research-focused academics, postdoctoral fellows, faculty fellows, and visiting fellows. IASH is supported by strategic funding from the UQ Senior Executive and the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. Most of its specific research projects are funded by external grants.

In addition to its research and publication activities, IASH organises international conferences, public lectures, themed seminar series, and in-house work in progress seminars. Its members are actively involved in national and international research networks, and it has formal links to a number of Australian and overseas institutions. Central to the mission of the Institute is a Faculty Fellows programme that sees staff from teaching schools in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences seconded to the Institute for a semester in order to pursue their own research projects.

The Institute incorporates research activity from two research centres of UQ’s original Faculty of Arts--the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies (CCCS), founded in 2000 and directed by Professor Graeme Turner and, more recently, Professor Gay Hawkins, the and the Centre for the History of European Discourses (CHED), founded in 2002 and directed by Professor Peter Cryle and subsequently Professor Peter Harrison--along with the UQ Node of the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions (Europe 1100-1800) whose Chief Investigator and Director is Professor Peter Holbrook.  Professor Harrison is the inaugural director of IASH.

The Institute occupies a purpose-built research space in the Forgan-Smith Tower, located in the Centre of UQ’s St Lucia campus.