About Us
What are Institutes for Advanced Study (IAS)?
Institutes for Advanced Study (IAS) are at the apex of the research and higher education ladder. They are designed to afford top quality researchers with an opportunity to focus entirely on their central calling in their respective fields, either individually or in collaborative enterprise.
What is the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study (JIAS)?
The JIAS will be the first fully-fledged institute of advanced learning in South Africa’s political and economic heartland. Although rooted within UJ, and keen to foster UJ’s institutional goals, the JIAS will co-operate with all HE institutions in the country.
The JIAS is a joint initiative of UJ and the Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. Although the JIAS will borrow from the long experience of the NTU’s own experience with a highly successful IAS, it will take on unique features of its own.
The JIAS is located on a separate mini-campus in a leafy Johannesburg suburb called Westdene.
Who is funding the JIAS?
In its early stages, JIAS will be funded by a grant from UJ but, over time, the hope is to elicit foundation and corporate funding. Funding for exchanges will be carried by the NTU.
How will it be governed?
The JIAS will be directed by a senior UJ academic who reports into the office of the Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research, Postgraduate Studies and the Library at UJ and, so, into the university structures. Senior academics from UJ and NTU – augmented by independent outsiders – are the core of a separate Advisory Board.
What topics will be on the JIAS Agenda?
The JIAS will be no different. But our partnership with NTU will provide opportunities to unite African and Asian thought and research in both the human and natural sciences.
As a guiding principle, the selection of Fellows will be on the quality of the proposed research and the researchers. In pursuit of this, the JIAS will seek out global leaders in their respective fields including Nobel Laureates.
How will the JIAS organise its work?
The JIAS is a residential facility. The annual work will be divided into three terms of three months each. On average one in every three terms will be open to the academics wanting to work on their own research. The remaining terms will be devoted to specific topics or themes.