After earlier meetings in Freiburg and Hamburg, the member institutions of the network came together in Delmenhorst to exchange views on the challenges of science funding in a globalised science system in transition. The focus was on the shared interest in making the contribution of German IAS to the local science landscape and their needs more visible. The HWK, also an Institute for Advanced Study, hosted the event.
Closer cooperation, greater visibility
The German Institutes for Advanced Study support outstanding scientists (fellows) from all over the world by, among other things, awarding scholarships for research stays in Germany. “There are currently 24 IAS in Germany, which host a total of about 450 fellows each year, almost 60% of them international. They thus make an important contribution to the internationality and diversity of the German research landscape,” say the network’s organisers. Although they measurably strengthen the research potential of many universities, their work is still too rarely perceived accordingly.
The network therefore wants to do more to promote the services of IAS in a competitive research landscape: “Due to their usually manageable size and their ability to quickly and flexibly adapt funding instruments to newly emerging fields of research (e.g. the Corona pandemic or the Ukraine war), they contribute significantly to an agile and innovative scientific enterprise,” say the organisers.
The number of IAS in Germany has increased to 24 institutes in the past 20 years. While many IAS traditionally focus on the humanities, cultural sciences and social sciences, others focus on the natural and engineering sciences or provide funding across disciplines. They maintain different funding profiles from basic research to application. What they all have in common is a focus on interdisciplinarity, internationalisation, innovation in research projects and the creation of space for unconventional thinking.
Key document adopted
To raise awareness of the potential of IAS, their contribution to the innovativeness and future viability of the German science landscape and their needs, the network adopted a position paper.
IAS have a unique variety of scientific funding opportunities, it says: “cutting-edge research, internationalisation, researchers in early career stages, individual and group research, and recently increasingly interdisciplinarity.” They combine this broad range of instruments with the ability to overcome disciplinary boundaries: “Through the exchange of guest researchers (fellows) across disciplinary boundaries as well as networking and cooperation between disciplines, they bring together the most diverse fields of science that are otherwise often unconnected in research.” Above all, the intellectual freedom that IAS can grant excellent researchers is unique: “IAS open up spaces for experimentation that are otherwise too rare in the science system, because innovation arises precisely in the collaboration of outstanding researchers with time for scientific depth and reflection”
German IAS thus “act as innovation engines for science and as incubators for research ideas”. To be able to fulfil this mission, they need greater programmatic and financial autonomy, e.g. through legally defined scope and coordinated material funding, which the German Council of Science and Humanities has already called for in a statement in 2021.
The network
The network of German Institutes for Advanced Study (IAS), which has been in existence since 2022, is an association of currently 20 German institutes. It is committed to improving the visibility of IAS in the public, political and academic spheres, to their programmatic and financial autonomy and to intensifying their cooperation. The network partners meet twice a year at changing locations.
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