Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities

A laboratory for innovative knowledge in society

The young Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, which only commenced its academic activity in the summer semester of 2009, was established as a cooperative enterprise between Frankfurt am Main’s Goethe University and the Werner Reimers Foundation, which is located in Bad Homburg vor der Höhe.

The Reimers Foundation has made a name for itself as an international meeting place for scholars working in the humanities and the social sciences. Frankfurt’s Goethe University is one of Germany’s largest academic institutions and is known particularly for the volume and quality of its research. Three Excellence Clusters receive assistance under the Excellence Initiative of the Federal Government and the Länder. The subjects concerned include not only the human sciences (»The formation of normative orders«) , but also medicine (»The cardiopulmonary system«) and the natural sciences (»Macromolecular complexes«). Frankfurt University has made a deliberate decision to remain a broad-based institution encompassing a full range of disciplines, among which the human sciences have traditionally been especially prominent.

As a part of the University, the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities embodies in concrete form the aim of consistently pursuing the development of academic research in the field of the human sciences. The Institute sees itself as a centre of productive intellectual innovation. It offers experts from every country in the world the opportunity of addressing issues in the sciences of mankind in a manner extending beyond the confines of their specific disciplines. The Institute is situated at the periphery of Bad Homburg’s Spa Park and comprises a new building housing the Institute itself, the Villa Reimers, a large park and a guest house. It provides teams of research workers with a tranquil but nevertheless conveniently located environment where they can work together without the interruptions of routine university life.

The Institute enables scholars from each discipline represented in the University to join with prominent academics from Germany and abroad in critically exploring both the main focus and other aspects of their particular fields of research. The stimulus resulting from experience gained at the Institute can in turn fuel further theoretical advances. In addition, the Institute for Advanced Studies considers one of its functions to be involvement of the general public in the debate on its research in the human sciences, for instance on issues of justice.

Villa Reimers	The Institute building	The guest house