Institute for Ideas & Imagination

The Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination is pleased to join social media forces with The Stavros Niarchos Foundation Public Humanities Initiative(SNFPHI). Together, our work supports scholars, writers, creative artists, and public humanities projects in Paris, Greece, and beyond. We look forward to sharing updates about our activities and welcoming you to our events. This profile will be deactivated in the coming days, please follow the SNFPHI page to stay connected.

It has been an eventful rentrée so far! We are delighted to announce the arrival of our fourth class of Fellows, alongside a $7.5 million grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation.

Read more about the new cohort of Fellows, and the grant, on the Columbia University in the City of New York page:

A New Class of Fellows and a Transformational Grant in Paris The Institute for Ideas and Imagination is welcoming a new cohort of fellows and announcing a $7.5 million grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) to solidify and expand operations.

We are delighted to announce that the online application platform for the 2023-2024 Fellowship is now open!

We will be accepting applications until November 5th.

For more information, or to apply, click here:

Applying for a Fellowship | Institute for Ideas and Imagination Bringing together creative artists of all kinds with scholars from across the humanities and sciences, the purpose of the Institute is to question the established ways in which knowledge is defined, produced, and taught.The Fellowship stipend is $37,500 per term, or $75,000 for a full academic year....

Please join us next Thursday for the last talk of the school year, featuring Darcy Kelley, a Neuroscientist at Columbia University in the City of New York, and L.A.-based composer Ursula Kwong-Brown.

During Breath and Body: Mind and Emotion, they will explore the mind-body connection exemplified in brain activity that drives vocal/musical expression and discuss how new approaches can be harnessed for healing after trauma.

For more information, or to sign up, click below:

Breath and Body: Mind and Emotion | Darcy Kelley and Ursula Kwong-Brown | Institute for Ideas and Imagination Damasio, a pioneering Neuroscientist whose research illuminated the processing of emotion within the human brain, reminds us that the Greek word for Psyche originally meant breath and blood.

Please join us for our last event of the season!

On May 30th, we are pleased to finish our programming this year with evening of readings and exchanges between Colm Tóibín and Anuk Arudpragasam.

The Magician, Tóibín's book on Thomas Mann, won the 2022 Rathbone Prize, and Arudpragasam's latest novel, A Passage North was shortlisted in 2022 for a Man Booker Prize.

Parisian Anglophone bookstore The Red Wheelbarrow Bookstore will be present at the event for book sales.

To register, click below:

Colm Tóibín and Anuk Arudpragasam in conversation | Entre Nous | Institute for Ideas and Imagination Join us for an evening of readings and exchanges between Colm Tóibín and Anuk Arudpragasam. The Magician, Tóibín's book on Thomas Mann, won the 2022 Rathbone Prize, and Arudpragasam's latest novel, A Passage North was shortlisted in 2022 for a Man Booker Prize.

Blood-lead levels have declined dramatically in both Paris and New York over the past 50 years.

This is good news because early-life exposure to lead has been clearly been implicated in increased likelihood of diminished intellectual function in children, learning and behavioral difficulties at school, juvenile detention, as well as reduced income and cardio-vascular disease later in life. The decline in lead exposure in both cities is primarily the result of bans on the use of lead-based paint in the 1970s and the phasing out of lead additives to gasoline in the subsequent decade. This doesn’t mean avoidable lead exposure of children has ended in both cities or elsewhere around the world. A significant number of children still ingest chips of old lead-based paint, play in areas where soil is contaminated with legacy lead from gasoline and other sources, or drink water supplied by lead pipes.

The goal of this workshop is to review progress made in Paris and New York to reduce lead exposure in recent decades and the extent to which continued exposure could and should be reduced further. Studies documenting still higher levels of exposure in other parts of the world where lead-based paint is widely sold or leaded-gasoline was banned only more recently will provide further perspective. The workshop will feature presentations by university-based health scientists and geochemists as well as public health managers for the government and environmental activists

Hosted by Lex van Geen, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and Institute Science Visitor, and Brian Mailloux, Barnard College, this event will take place online next Tuesday, May 2nd.

For more information, or to sign up, click here:

A tale of two cities: The decline in child exposure to lead in Paris and New York | Lex van Geen | Institute for Ideas and Imagination Blood-lead levels have declined dramatically in both Paris and New York over the past 50 years.

Please join us next Wednesday, April 27th for Racism, Culture & Health: Conceptual and Methodological Innovations, featuring Courtney Cogburn, associate professor at Columbia Socialwork.

Having developed with her research group innovative means to characterize and measure racism and evaluate its effects on mental and physical health, this presentation will show how we need to take an interdisciplinary approach to examining the intersections of culture, structure, and racism to understand the root of social and racial inequities in health, and the tools necessary to implement this approach.

More information and registration here:

Racism, Culture & Health: Conceptual and Methodological Innovations | Courtney Cogburn | Institute for Ideas and Imagination In order to build a culture of health and achieve health equity, we must engage in cultural processes in a more meaningful way.

We are delighted to announce a screening of ' documentary, homemade chez nous, on the movement in France.

Taking place on Wednesday, April 20th at Cinéma L'Arlequin, this free viewing (in French, with English subtitles)will also feature the director in conversation with writer .

Co-organized by Columbia Global Centers l Paris and Lost in Frenchlation, this is one event you don't want to miss!

More information and sign up information here:

Un Peuple | Lost in Frenchlation | Institute for Ideas and Imagination In October 2018, Emmanuel Macron’s government announces an increase on the tax for fuel. Citizens mobilize all over France in what is the the beginning of the Yellow Vest movement. In Chartres, a group of men and women gather everyday. Among them are Agnès, Benoît, Nathalie, et Allan, who are fu...

Please join us online on Tuesday, April 19th, for the next event in our series: Alternative Narratives with and .

In Difficult Women, writer and journalist Helen Lewis explores the complexities, incoherencies, and bad behavior across a history of feminism.

Rejecting the contemporary taste for feel-good stories of perfect heroines, Lewis lands on hard questions: When does the harm outweigh the good? How can we measure the moral sum of a person? And, now free from the grip of the one-dimensional ‘badass babe’ trope, where can contemporary feminism take us?

Continuing her research on forgotten women, Lewis’ new radio program, Great Wives, looks at the spouses of history’s most famous geniuses. How have men consistently attained the status of “genius,” while women have remained (by their side) wives? Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University Christia Mercer has done similar work uncovering forgotten voices and destabilizing the mythology of genius. From Spanish mysticism to 17th-century Neoplatonism, Mercer’s research in overlooked women complicates the legend of modern philosophy’s origins and most famous contributors. Join these two authors as they discuss their work on changing the historical record and seeking alternative narratives for the history of thought and action.

Sign up here:

Alternative Narratives with Helen Lewis and Christia Mercer | Entre Nous | Institute for Ideas and Imagination In Difficult Women, writer and journalist Helen Lewis explores the complexities, incoherencies, and bad behavior across a history of feminism.