What’s going on

Explore the stories behind our fellows’ ground-breaking research, the work in progress and the coming events at NIAS.

  • NIAS Opening of the Academic Year 2025-2026, with Claudine Gay
    Event 3 September 2025

    NIAS Opening of the Academic Year 2025-2026, with Claudine Gay

    Academic Freedom Besieged: Whose Academy? (And who decides?) – with a keynote by Claudine Gay, former President of Harvard University and Wilbur A. Cowett Professor of Government and of African and African American Studies.

  • Photo of the NIAS staff in the garden of the Oost-Indisch Huis by Marieke de Bra
    News

    We are looking for a great Director!

    As of May 2026, Jan Willem Duyvendak will retire from his role as Director. The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), of which NIAS is part, is now inviting applications to succeed him.

    • Image made by Canva AI depicting a large, ancient tree representing evolving perspectives.
      Theme Group

      Why do adults change their beliefs?

    • Hybrid Agencies: Interacting with Biological and Artificial Systems
      Theme Group

      Hybrid Agencies: Interacting with Biological and Artificial Systems

    • Ecology and Belonging: In Search of a New Political Space
      Theme Group

      Ecology and Belonging: In Search of a New Political Space

    • Early Dutch Commerce and Indigenous Landscapes
      Theme Group

      Early Dutch Commerce and Indigenous Landscapes

    • Re-imagining Security Labour
      Theme Group

      Re-imagining Security Labour

    • Future of Progressive Politics 1
      Theme Group

      Future of Progressive Politics

    • The nexus of the built environment, organizational legitimacy, and social networks 2
      Theme Group

      The Spatial Segregation of Neighborhood Organizations and Entrepreneurs: Connecting Urban Inequality to the Built Environment

    • Climate Change and the Governance of Tropical Marine Conservation
      Theme Group

      Climate Change and the Governance of Tropical Marine Conservation

    • Political Theories of Involuntary Servitude within Europe (1600-1850)
      Theme Group

      Political Theories of Involuntary Servitude within Europe (1600-1850)

    • Social Media for Digital Democracy: Theory, Applications, Algorithms
      Theme Group

      Social Media for Digital Democracy: Theory, Applications, Algorithms

    • Gastro-politics of multi-cultural eating: Spices
      Theme Group

      Refuge and Belonging

    • Accessible Tool for Language Assessment in Schools (ATLAS) 1
      Theme Group

      Accessible Tool for Language Assessment in Schools (ATLAS)

    • The Politics of (De)familiarization: The Common and the Strange in Contemporary Europe
      Theme Group

      The Politics of (De)familiarization: The Common and the Strange in Contemporary Europe

    • New Theme Group Builds Research Agenda in Studies of War, Mass Violence & Genocide
      Theme Group

      Building a Research Agenda in the Studies of War, Mass Violence and Genocide

    • Accountability in Medical Autonomous Expert Systems: Ethical and Epistemological Challenges for Explainable AI
      Theme Group

      Accountability in Medical Autonomous Expert Systems: Ethical and Epistemological Challenges for Explainable AI

    • Vassily Kandinsky Composition 8
      Theme Group

      Legal Mobilization: Analyzing Law-Based Advocacy

    • Understanding Knowledge in the Low Countries, 1500-1900
      Theme Group

      Understanding Knowledge in the Low Countries, 1500-1900

    • What is Translation? Articulating the Missing Link between Psychiatry and Neuroscience 1
      Theme Group

      What is Translation? Articulating the Missing Link between Psychiatry and Neuroscience

    • Three British-Indian soldiers burn down houses in Bekasi (West-Java, 1945). Collection NIMH.
      Theme Group

      Comparing the Wars of Decolonization

    • Commodity Frontiers and the Making of Global Capitalism 4
      Theme Group

      Commodity Frontiers and the Making of Global Capitalism