The Aix-Marseille Institute
for Advanced Study

IMéRA is an Institute for Advanced Study, or IAS (Institut d’Etudes Avancées, IEA). Its purpose is to offer residency programs for high-level international researchers, both confirmed and emerging, of all disciplines, so as to provide them with an opportunity to meet, carry out work requiring several months of freedom from administrative or teaching duties, and strengthen ties between research and higher education centres in the region.

The Institute, which is fully interdisciplinary, is both a residency centre and the driving force behind a long-term collective project, aimed "contributing to the construction of future interdisciplinarity" through commitment to transcending disciplinary boundaries and emphasising the human dimension of sciences, which is all too often neglected in favour of their conceptual dimension.

IMéRA, which was founded by the three Universities of Aix-Marseille and the French National Scientific Research Centre (Centre National de Recherche Scientifique – CNRS), is a co-member, along with the Institutes for Advanced Study in Paris, Lyon and Nantes, of the French IAS Network (Réseau Français des Instituts d’Etudes Avancées – RFIEA), one of the thirteen Thematic Advanced Research Networks (Réseaux Thématiques de Recherche Avancée – RTRA) set up by the French Government in a drive to create poles of scientific excellence.

IMéRA is characterised by three clear choices:

• Its openness to all scientific disciplines—hard sciences, social sciences and the humanities—as well as to literature and artistic creation, with a view to stimulating innovative exchanges and thereby transcending disciplinary boundaries;

• Its emphasis on hosting young research teams which are interdisciplinary and international, so as to allow them to develop their projects in exceptional conditions, in relation with senior, experienced researchers, whether through residency at IméRA or by carrying out research based in the region.

• Its Mediterranean orientation, whose aim is to offer excellent conditions for allowing researchers from the Mediterranean zone to work in association with the Institute and thus to provide them with a flexible, open structure fostering intellectual debate.