The Institute for the Study of the Ancient World is a center for advanced scholarly research and graduate education at New York University. ISAW's mission is to cultivate comparative, connective investigations of the ancient world from the western Mediterranean to China. Areas of specialty among ISAW's faculty include the Greco-Roman world, the Ancient Near East, Egypt, Central Asia and the Silk Road, East Asian art and archaeology, Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages, ancient science, and digital humanities. ISAW was founded in 2006 with funding from the Leon Levy Foundation, established to continue the philanthropic legacy of Leon Levy, co-founder of the Oppenheimer mutual funds. Long interested in ancient history, Levy in his final years, along with his wife Shelby White, began discussions about the creation of a path-breaking institute where advanced scholars would explore trade and cultural links among ancient civilizations. After Levy’s death in 2003, one of the earliest initiatives of the Leon Levy Foundation, was the fulfillment of that plan. ISAW is a discrete entity within New York University, independent of any other school or department of the university, with its own endowment and its own board of trustees, and is housed in separate facilities in a historic six-story limestone on East 84th Street in Manhattan.
Governance, faculty, and staff
The Director of ISAW is Alexander Jones. He succeeded the founding director Roger Bagnall in September, 2016. As of September 1, 2018, the following individuals served as ISAW faculty:
Lorenzo d'Alfonso
Claire Bubb
Roderick B. Campbell
Sebastian Heath
Robert G. Hoyland
Alexander Jones
Antonis Kotsonas
Beate Pongratz-Leisten
Daniel T. Potts
Sören Stark
Lillian Lan-ying Tseng
As of September 1, 2018, Senior Staff Members included:
ISAW's website describes its governance structure as follows: Appointments and academic programs of the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World are under the jurisdiction of its faculty, which achieved independent status in fall, 2010, and which is led by the Director. The Director reports to the Provost and President of New York University. In addition, the Institute has its own . Its chair is the Institute's Founder, Shelby White. The Council plays a crucial role in ensuring that ISAW fulfills its mission and has the means necessary to do so. It provides essential advice to the Director on strategic directions and public programming, and its members are vital ambassadors for ISAW in enlarging the public reached by its work.
Academic programs
ISAW's graduate program offers a PhD in the Study of the Ancient World. ISAW offers hosts visiting research scholars conducting postdoctoral research. There are three types of appointment for visiting scholars:
Visiting assistant professors, appointed for two years, during which they are expected to teach two undergraduate courses and one graduate seminar.
Visiting research scholars, appointed for one year of research, funded in part or in whole by ISAW. These scholars may be at any point in their career from postdoctoral to retired.
Externally funded scholars, who have the same responsibilities and privileges as the categories above, but do not receive financial support from ISAW.
Scholars in all three categories are expected to be in residence at ISAW for the duration of their appointment and to participate in the intellectual life of the community, including presenting a public lecture.
Exhibitions
In order to support its mission of communicating information about antiquity to the public, ISAW organizes public exhibitions. Past exhibitions include:
Most exhibitions have been accompanied by , many of which are co-published by ISAW and Princeton University Press.
Library
ISAW houses a research library of approximately 40,000 non-circulating print volumes. The ISAW Library is a branch library of the NYU Division of Libraries, with facilities located on four floors of ISAW's facilities on East 84th Street. The library is open to members of the ISAW and NYU communities, as well as to scholars from other institutions who can demonstrate a need to access materials in the collection for their research. Particular areas of strength in the ISAW Library's print collection include Greek and Roman material culture and history, Papyrology, Egyptology, Mesopotamian Archaeology and Assyriology, Central Asia and Iran, and Early China. The library is engaged in providing access and support for new and emerging forms of digital scholarship, scholarly communication, and pedagogy in ancient studies. The library's digital initiatives include the Ancient World Digital Library and a joint project with ISAW Digital Programs to help catalog the online and open access resources.
Publications
ISAW has produced or sponsored both print and electronic publications related to the ancient world. These include:
Jonathan Ben-Dov and Seth Sanders, eds. Ancient Jewish Sciences and the History of Knowledge in Second Temple Literature. NYU Press, 2014.
David Wengrow. The Origins of Monsters: Image and Cognition in the First Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Princeton University Press, 2013. Based on the author's Rostovtzeff Lectures delivered at ISAW in 2011.
Roger S. Bagnall and Giovanni R. Ruffini. Amheida I: Ostraka from Trimithis 1. NYU Press, 2012. Also published in an open-access online version.
ISAW At Five, a book produced for ISAW's Five Year Celebration in May 2012.
ISAW Papers, an open-content scholarly journal that publishes article-length works on any topic within the scope of ISAW's scholarly research.
