BIARI
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Brown International Advanced Research Institutes
The world of higher education is expanding rapidly as cutting edge research in the sciences, social sciences and humanities, comes to require dialogue with global peers. Moreover, over the last decades there has been increased study of emerging markets and the global South in many disciplines. There has been little focus on knowledge production by scholars from these regions and few opportunities for their work to break through into the global academic conversation. As the academic enterprise becomes a global conversation, leadership in research will require an intellectually open platform for transnational academic exchange amongst the world’s scholars.
This June, Brown University inaugurated an annual series of International Advanced Research Institutes, co-sponsored by Santander Universidades, to convene a rising generation of scholars from emerging markets and the global South. Each year, Brown will open its doors to promising young academics from across the world to share their work with one another and meet with leading figures in their field, in an intensive workshop-like setting. Organized by field and addressing cutting edge issues, the Institutes will offer a rising generation of the world’s academic leaders a distinctive international experience in Providence.
We expect the Brown International Advanced Research Institutes to make a significant contribution to global research through transnational academic collaboration, building networks and providing needed professional development opportunities for young scholars embarking on lives in research and teaching. The Institutes will be a flagship program in a University-wide effort to internationalize by utilizing our convening power to foster high-level international intellectual and policy conversations.
The Institutes
Each year, beginning in the 2008-9 academic year, the Brown International Advanced Research Institutes in International Affairs will issue a call for proposals directed to University Departments, Institutes and Programs interested in convening and organizing a Brown International Advanced Research Institute. Funding for selected proposals will include all direct costs of mounting the Institute. In particular, BIARI is committed to providing the funding necessary to defray the participation costs of scholars from the global South and emerging markets who are unable to obtain funding from their respective institutions.
Each June, the Institutes will be convened by leading faculty from Brown and elsewhere who will invite participation from key global experts as visiting faculty. Each Institute will be designed with a view to (1) promoting cutting-edge research within a field or discipline; (2) encouraging new approaches to the field--including interdisciplinary approaches; and (3) encouraging a reconsideration of the field’s canonical questions and works from multiple international perspectives. The participants in the Institutes will be the most promising young academics from emerging markets and the global South, as well as young scholars from elsewhere interested in participating in dialog with such a group. Each Institute will have an application process that is relevant to the discipline and is crafted by the faculty shaping the project that year and all participants will have to be selected through that process. Participants will have full access to the Brown campus and faculty during their stay, and their tenure at Brown will also forge long term mentorship of these young scholars by the leading lights of their field.
The Institutes will be organized by discipline and their precise structure will vary from field to field. The Institutes may vary in length, from one to four weeks. The goal in each case will be to provide a real alumni experience of sustained interaction, rather than the come and go of an academic conference. Each Institute will provide the opportunity for sharing new research, learning from established leaders in the field, and exploring the field’s canonical questions and materials from the perspective of various national and local traditions. In appropriate cases, lab experience or instruction in new research methods will be part of the Institute program.
We expect that some disciplines will come to be represented every year, situating the Brown International Advanced Research Institutes as the place for emerging scholars in those fields to meet one another. Other disciplinary Institutes may be held once, or may repeat on multiple year intervals. Each year the program will also offer all participants the opportunity to focus on topics that are a priority for a truly internationalist scholarship, in fields where Brown has exceptional strength. Examples might range from technology and entrepreneurship or development economics, international affairs, population studies, or study of the ancient world through to nanotechnology, bio-engineering or planetary geology. The Brown Institutes will be structured to provide opportunities for collegial exchange and catalyze collaborative research projects.
Brown and Beyond
For participating scholars, the Institute will offer a unique opportunity to learn from the range of perspectives on their field being developed across the world. Moreover, we expect the Institute to offer important spillover benefits for faculty research and teaching partnerships where these meetings may also provide the basis for future research and teaching collaborations through co-tutorial arrangements and opportunities for visiting scholar exchanges. For Brown’s own junior faculty, and those of our peer institutions, participation will offer the opportunity to engage a world of future research colleagues.
By offering a sustained locus for engagement and ongoing networking, the Brown Institutes will assist scholars from the areas less well represented in global debates in making themselves heard. For those of us in the United States, the opportunity to engage with these young scholars as they develop their ideas, and to learn from the various perspectives they will bring to their disciplines will be of real significance. This effort is particularly pertinent in the current moment where Brown is taking proactive steps to deepen its links with academia in places like China, India, the Middle East or South Africa – recognizing that these countries are producing a rising cadre of intellectual leaders who will have a global presence and should be in global conversation.
We expect to work with those universities with which we have close collaborative relationships, in the United States as well as abroad, to identify the most promising young scholars, build a network for ongoing research collaboration, and recruit leading scholars as mentors for the workshops themselves. At the same time, we hope the Institutes will open the door to new relationships with the world’s expanding network of excellent research and teaching institutions.