Past projects

Each year, the IAS supports ambitious and adventurous interdisciplinary projects tackling major research questions. Researchers from around the globe join Durham colleagues in collaborative teams to develop ground-breaking ideas, explore interdisciplinary synergies and develop new programmes of research. Learn more by following the links below.

Browse projects by year

Legal Criteria for an Equitable Fossil Fuel Phaseout

Syntactical Structures and the Evolution of Mind and Culture

What is the Role of the Archive in Decolonising the University?

What is the Role of the Archive in Decolonising the University?

An Abolitionist Industrial Complex: Patterns of anti-trafficking/anti-slavery policy and practice in the 21st century

An Abolitionist Industrial Complex: Patterns of anti-trafficking/anti-slavery policy and practice in the 21st century

Resolving Disputes in the Space Industry

Resolving Disputes in the Space Industry

Mind the Gap

Mind the Gap

Stealing Secrets? Intelligence theory and the open society

Stealing Secrets? Intelligence theory and the open society

Opportunities in Pollution

Opportunities in Pollution

Who are “We the People”?: Community beyond the state

Who are “We the People”?: Community beyond the state

What is the role of the archive in decolonising the university?

Feeling political: how intimacy and everyday life make political identities

Feeling political: how intimacy and everyday life make political identities

Absence/presence of Durham’s black history: Exploration of institutions, archives, students and pedagogies

Absence/presence of Durham’s black history: Exploration of institutions, archives, students and pedagogies

Firing up the epistemological engine

Firing up the epistemological engine

Material Imagination

Material Imagination

Masculinities in Martial Sports: West, East and Global South

Masculinities in Martial Sports: West, East and Global South

Exploring Arctic soundscapes

Exploring Arctic soundscapes

Understanding Offence: delimiting the (un)sayable

Uncovering Leaders’ Identity Processes Through the Use of Natural Language Processing

Uncovering Leaders’ Identity Processes Through the Use of Natural Language Processing

Archaeology of the Dispossessed

Archaeology of the Dispossessed

Conversations on Machine Learning and Conceptual Change

Conversations on Machine Learning and Conceptual Change

Mediation for the twenty first century: Connecting the local and the global

Mediation for the twenty first century: Connecting the local and the global

Examining the interconnections between physical health, mental health and physical activity with neurodivergent youth

Examining the interconnections between physical health, mental health and physical activity with neurodivergent youth

Understanding Offence: delimiting the (un)sayable – International conference: call for papers

Understanding Offence: delimiting the (un)sayable – International conference: call for papers

Interdisciplinary priorities for an inclusive neurodiverse society

Interdisciplinary priorities for an inclusive neurodiverse society

Walking as Research: Exploring Landscapes and Interdisciplinary Dialogue in Northumberland National Park

Walking as Research: Exploring Landscapes and Interdisciplinary Dialogue in Northumberland National Park

In Absence of Others: how managers’ daily solitude and loneliness at work informs their identity and well-being

In Absence of Others: how managers’ daily solitude and loneliness at work informs their identity and well-being

The Politics of Credibility

The Politics of Credibility

Antibacterial Clay Therapy

Antibacterial Clay Therapy

Enabling responsible space exploitation

Enabling responsible space exploitation

Looking Back to Move Forward: History, Recovery, and Sustainability in Understanding the War in Ukraine on a Global Scale

Justice and Artificial Intelligence

Justice and Artificial Intelligence

‘Gaming’ History?

ALTS: AI-enabled Legal Technologies and their Consequences on Society

ALTS: AI-enabled Legal Technologies and their Consequences on Society

Threshold Worlds

Threshold Worlds

Pasts in the Present

Pasts in the Present

Tübingen College of Fellows – Durham IAS collaboration

Tübingen College of Fellows – Durham IAS collaboration

Science and the Media

Science and the Media

The Many Facets of Social Inequality

The Many Facets of Social Inequality

Dynamic Interactions at Cell Membrane Interfaces

Dynamic Interactions at Cell Membrane Interfaces

Risks to Youth and Studenthood in Digital Spaces

Risks to Youth and Studenthood in Digital Spaces

Quantifying the global risk of volcanic eruptions to the airline industry

Quantifying the global risk of volcanic eruptions to the airline industry

Mater-morphosis: Transformations of motherhood through matrescence

Mater-morphosis: Transformations of motherhood through matrescence

Negotiating landscapes of rights

Negotiating landscapes of rights

Pedagogies of Dispossession – South Asia Research Group at Durham

Pedagogies of Dispossession – South Asia Research Group at Durham

Science, society and environmental change in the first millennium CE

Science, society and environmental change in the first millennium CE

Syntactical structures and the evolution of mind and culture

Syntactical structures and the evolution of mind and culture

Abusing Antiquity?

Abusing Antiquity?

Humans and Numbers

Molecular windscreen wipers to mechanically disrupt bacterial biofilms

Representing Memory

Representing Memory