2025 in review
The mission of IAS is to advance cutting-edge interdisciplinary research that addresses complex scientific and societal challenges. At IAS we bring together imaginative researchers with backgrounds beyond one discipline, artists and decision-makers to jointly tackle emerging questions. We run an international fellowship programme, and host and organise events to spark ideas, exchange knowledge, facilitate networking and create new research partnerships.
Highlights at IAS
Shaping Interfaces Between Science and the Public
The Research Priority Area (RPA) Shaping Interfaces Between Science and the Public is a new interdisciplinary collaboration at the University of Amsterdam, hosted at the Institute for Advanced Study as of September 2025. The RPA focuses on complex questions related to the challenges of today that demand scientifically informed citizens and policy. To answer questions such as ‘how can science better align with societal needs?’ and ‘how do we responsibly apply new knowledge in fields like clinical practice?’, the RPA connects UvA methodologists and philosophers of science and technology working across diverse domains, including law, digital humanities, psychiatry, and mental health. In the future, the RPA aims to create a Public Methodology Centre at the Institute for Advanced Study.
Linking research and policy practice
In 2025, the POLDER initiative strengthened its collaboration with RIVM through the COMTIP lab, examining how social dynamics, behavioural changes, and policy interventions interact to influence public health and sustainability outcomes. By bringing researchers and policymakers together in a shared workspace, POLDER creates opportunities for hands-on exploration of complex societal challenges and the co-development of practical, evidence-informed approaches to policy.
Launch of new Master Programme Complex Systems and Policy
In September, the Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies, in close collaboration with the Institute for Advanced Study, launched the new master’s programme Complex Systems and Policy. The programme offers a unique approach to future-focused policymaking drawing from a variety of academic fields, including social sciences, data science, and modelling. Students are challenged to gain a better understanding of policymaking and tackle pressing societal challenges related to health and sustainability, such as the energy transition and urban mental health. The master creates a space where students, stakeholders and researchers from various fields can come together and collaborate.
Selected guests
The challenges of our time
Over the past five years, concerns about existential risks, ranging from mass casualties and civilizational collapse to potential extinction, have become increasingly urgent. On March 25, 2025, IAS External Faculty member and Professor Emeritus Paul Edwards (University of Michigan) brought together scholars and public intellectuals to examine how current global realities are reshaping our understanding of large-scale threats. A central theme of the workshop was the complex role of digital information systems, which can support resilience but also intensify risks through misinformation and surveillance.
On 22 May 2025, the Empirical Ethics research group hosted the workshop Research, Values, and Intervention: Navigating AI and Technomoral Futures, as part of the Empirical Ethics Workshop Series. The session, featuring philosopher of science and technology Sabina Leonelli, explored how values shape research practices and how AI systems, large datasets and knowledge infrastructures reshape ethics. Through critical discussion, participants examined ethico-political implications of emerging socio-technical arrangements and reflected on practice-based interventions to promote justice, equity and integrity in research.
In Conversation with Professor Achille Mbembe
In November 2025, the Research Center for Material Culture, the International Spinoza Prize Foundation, and the Institute for Advanced Study hosted an invitational conversation with Achille Mbembe, Professor of History and Politics at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, at the Wereldmuseum Amsterdam. Organised in connection with Mbembe’s receipt of the Spinozalens 2025, the closed exchange brought together scholars engaging with his analysis of colonialism, capitalism, necropolitics, and life futures. The conversation reflected on global crises, technologies of power, and the possibilities of rethinking solidarity, borders and planetary coexistence beyond colonial and Eurocentric frameworks.
Fellows, partners & students
Research in a minute
Got a minute? Discover what IAS Fellows are exploring during their Fellowship.
‘Research in a Minute’ features IAS Fellows answering big, societally relevant questions in just 60 seconds. These short videos highlight the real-world impact of academic research, making complex ideas accessible to a broad audience. From climate change to polarisation, each Fellow offers a quick, clear insight inspired by their research.
Health, sustainability and policy
Strengthening the collaboration between the Institute for Advanced Study and the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM), Jeljer Hoekstra joined IAS as a Policy Fellow from May 2025. His work bridges health, sustainability and policy, with a strong focus on prevention, healthy ageing, food systems and the behavioural dynamics that shape policy outcomes. Through his fellowship, Hoekstra advances interdisciplinary approaches to complex societal challenges while actively building new research connections between IAS and RIVM.
Collaboration with the UvA Data Science Centre (DSC): Empirical Ethics and Data Science Methods
The UvA’s Data Science Centre (DSC) and Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) welcomed Delfina Martinez Pandiani and Paula Helm as fellows in their joint fellowship programme in April 2025. Their project explored how AI-driven analysis of large-scale personal data, particularly in monetised digital contexts, can both expose and shape the vulnerabilities of data subjects. Focusing on the case of ‘childfluencers’ in European family vlogs, they investigated how AI tools such as facial recognition and content analysis might be used to identify patterns of overexposure and potential exploitation. Simultaneously, it critically examined the ethical dilemmas that arise when these same technologies are deployed in protective contexts.
Fellows blog
Get to know our (alumni) fellows in their personal blog about their fellowship. They share their experiences, highlight the outcomes of your fellowship, and contribute valuable insights of what it means to be a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study.
Meet the IAS fellows
Meet the IAS (alumni) fellows through their fellowship videos, where they introduce their research and plan for their fellowship. In a few minutes they share the vision behind their projects, outline their goals, and discuss the questions they aim to explore at the Institute for Advanced Study in Amsterdam. Each video offers a glimpse into the innovative and interdisciplinary work ahead, setting the stage for discovery and collaboration.
Selected seminars & workshops
IAS hosts Amsterdam Complexity School on Climate Change for the second time
In 2025, IAS hosted the Amsterdam Complexity School on Climate Change (ACSCC) for the second time, uniting 40 early-career researchers and stakeholders to tackle climate challenges using complex systems science. Participants from diverse disciplines and sectors joined keynotes, panels, and performances by experts, exploring topics such as tipping points, climate justice, and media narratives. During the conference, interdisciplinary teams developed proposals on complex challenges, such as decarbonisation, misinformation, and governance.
Sustainability and Speculation at the End of “the End of History”
How does financialisation reshape sustainability governance and speculative futures? The workshop Sustainability and Speculation at the End of “the End of History” brought together perspectives to critically examine how finance intersects with environmental, social, and political change. By situating finance at the core of speculative sustainability politics, the workshop illuminated how contemporary financial governance simultaneously sustains and constrains pathways toward liveable futures. It addressed these dynamics across past, present, and post-future temporalities, tracing the historical development of financialized sustainability, from union-driven pension investment politics to the rise of ESG frameworks and climate risk analytics.
Brain Modeling and High-Order Interactions
HOI-BrainMod, a one-day workshop initiated by IAS Alumni Fellow Marilyn Gatica, explored the understanding of brain, cognition, and behaviour research. It highlighted whole-brain modelling and high-order interactions as tools to move beyond pairwise analyses and reveal mechanisms of consciousness, ageing, and neurodegeneration. Through applications in neuromodulation, dementia, and consciousness studies, the event showed how complex brain activity emerges from structural and functional interactions.
Strengthening Science in Society
The new Research Priority Area (RPA), ‘Shaping Interfaces between Science and the Public’, aims to strengthen the relationship between science, citizen science, social debate and various professional practices. On December 1, 2025, the RPA brought together a group of researchers at the Allard Pierson Museum and opened a dialogue to explore collaboration and ways to connect research with societal interactions.