This call is open
Are you a scholar under the age of 35 by May 28, 2027 and currently doing your research under a postdoctoral fellowship contract with a university? If so, Iméra, The Institute for Advanced Study at Aix Marseille Université offers you the possibility of spending three months of your research contract in a unique work and living settings, where scientists and artists from all over the world and all disciplines significantly transform the most common frameworks for thought and action.
Closing date: July 3rd, 2026 at 1pm (French time)
General Information
For preparing your application and learning about the conditions of the residency, please ensure you read the PDF document accessible below.
Application and residency conditions for 2026-27
Iméra is a sanctuary of intellectual freedom where a temporary community of high-level international scientists and artists can find the time, the space, and the resources needed to discover, individually and with others, new meaning and content for original interdisciplinary research.
In a place where conditions are so different from the academic and artistic routine, important ideas and works may emerge. Creations capable of modifying the boundaries and the established paradigms, or even significantly transforming the most widespread frameworks today to think and act.
An institute for advanced study is at the same time a scientific utopia – the best possible university – and a living alternative to existing academic institutions – another kind of university.
Why submit an application?
What difference can a residence make in an institute for advanced study for you? What particular experiences and offers can we provide?
- In a career phase of pressure, stress, new and time-consuming challenges, you will find space, time and support for research, intellectual and academic development.
- In a career phase when personal and scientific autonomy is undermined by overly close and conditional university ties, you will find individual freedom, independence and autonomy as a necessary basis for your research.
- In a career phase with a strong focus on individual success, you will find a scholar’s community, communication and possible new networks for your research. After a discipline-specific PhD, you will find interdisciplinarity, reflexivity, criticism and openness as driving factors of your research.
What can we offer you?
The opportunity to spend three months of your postdoctoral research at Iméra as part of a research residency during the 2026–2027 academic year.
You will be provided with free accommodation in one of Iméra’s fourteen apartments, located in the Parc Longchamp in Marseille, one of the most fascinating and extreme cities in Europe: a historical melting pot and a “refuge city”, “port city”, “transit city”, “Mediterranean city”. You will live and work in a small campus located on a hill where for centuries astronomers have observed and searched for comets, a few hundred meters from one of the poorest neighborhoods in Europe.
You will benefit from an office in an open co-working space.
You will participate to the CBS (Community Building Seminar), the only mandatory time of collective activity for each resident at Iméra, which takes place regularly during the year (3 hours on Thursday morning), intended as a moment of mutualization of knowledge, meetings and exchanges sometimes unexpected, a real collective intelligence device.
An active knowledge of French and/or English (written and spoken) is essential. Linguistic skills in both languages are desirable due to the bilingual context of Iméra: for example, weekly seminars (see below) are held in both languages. Laureates who are not fluent in French are encouraged to familiarize themselves with it during their stay, if not beforehand.
Application deadline : July 3rd, 2026, at 1 PM (CET+2)
Applicants must select one of the two residency periods, each lasting three months, in either the first or second semester:
• Three-month residency in the first semester: November 2, 2026, to January 26, 2027
• Three-month residency in the second semester: March 1st, 2027, to May 28, 2027
Publication of selection : End of July 2026
To be eligible applicants must meet the following conditions:
- To be less than thirty-five years old by May 28, 2027;
- To have a postdoctoral contract at the time of the residency, which enables a research residency abroad of at least three months;
- Must not have lived in France for more than twelve months within the three years prior to this call for applications.
- If a visa is required, provide proof of sufficient funds to cover the duration of the stay.
The postdoctoral fellows benefit from travel expenses coverage and free accommodation on the Iméra site.
Applications are evaluated based on, but not limited to the following criteria:
- Quality of research;
- Future potential;
- Creative originality;
- Ready to use scientific and intellectual freedom – not only solving research established questions;
- Openness and non discipline-specific curiosity – avoiding an overly narrow focus on one’s discipline.
The online application file consists of the following documents:
- Complete the application form (including mandatory fields);
- Upload a curriculum vitae including a list of publications (maximum three pages);
- Upload your postdoctoral research contract for us to confirm your eligibility status;
- Upload your best article;
- Upload a presentation of the research project to be carried out during the residency (maximum five pages) followed by a selective bibliography;
- Indicate and justify which of Iméra’s four research programs is the most appropriate for your research project:
- Enrico Donaggio (directeur scientifique) : enrico.donaggio@univ-amu.fr
- Constance Moréteau (coordinatrice scientifique) : constance.moreteau@univ-amu.fr
