Dorothea
Rüland

To put it in a nutshell: We want to network! We bring researchers, artists and cultural professionals from all over the world together with their colleagues in Hamburg in order to contribute to the internationalization of Hamburg and to make Hamburg even better known as a location for science and research.

Every fellow cohort is a new adventure. New people come with new ideas, bring their networks with them, new topics appear on the agenda, and exciting cross-connections between different approaches and questions emerge—interdisciplinarity in the best sense of the word. A continuous learning process that also changes HIAS. HIAS has completed its first evaluations, is part of the European network NetIAS and is thus not only connecting researchers and artists with one another, but also itself with other institutions: locally with local partners such as the Research Center for Contemporary History (FZH), regionally with other IAS and globally with STIAS (Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study) and CALAS, a Maria Sibylla Merian Center in Latin America.

As a result, the cohorts’ composition becomes more diverse, and intentionally so. The more perspectives are represented, the better. In the process, new topics are constantly emerging; they are not predetermined but are created from the bottom up: Urban ecology, for example, is something we want to cover in the present issue. Basically, the question of what kind of world we want to live in and what it should look like in the future, runs like a thread through the various discourses, once with a view to nature, but also with a view to our society and how we live together. Specifically, the atmosphere at HIAS, our philosophy, if you will, should not be neglected: For only when everyone feels comfortable does this constructive togetherness come about. This includes home-cooked meals, the backyard garden, the cultural city of Hamburg, living close to campus, and much more.