Phone +1 212-992-7800 | Founded 2006 | |
Address 15 E 84th St, New York, NY 10028, USA Similar Columbia University, Hunter College, New York University, The Metropolit Museum, Dr Adam H Skolnick | ||
The Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW) 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.
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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.
The Director of ISAW is Roger Bagnall. ISAW faculty conduct historical, archaeological, socio-cultural and linguistics research and offer doctoral and postdoctoral programs.
Academic programs
ISAW's graduate program offers a PhD in the Study of the Ancient World.
ISAW also offers hosts visiting research scholars conducting postdoctoral research. There are three types of appointment for visiting scholars:
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 illustrated catalogs, 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 also 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 (AWDL) 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: