Columbia’s Institute for Ideas and Imagination expands through a major SNF grant

A significant grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) will help Columbia University’s Institute for Ideas and Imagination continue and expand its work, as Columbia describes it, “to foster fresh ways of thinking about art, scholarship, and knowledge.”

The new grant builds on SNF’s support for the Institute for Ideas and Imagination from its earliest days, and for Columbia’s SNF Public Humanities Initiative, which seeks to bring humanities insights to life for the public and will now become the Institute's public-facing arm.

Learn more about how the SNF grant will bolster the Institute’s work and meet its latest cohort of fellows.

“SNF believes deeply in the power of collaboration across disciplines, beyond borders, and outside any preconception of how things ‘should’ work,” said SNF Co-President Andreas Dracopoulos. “As this incredible new cohort of fellows will undoubtedly demonstrate, when people who are curious and care deeply about the impact their ideas can have on the world come together, amazing things happen. We are proud to be a part of it.”

“The Stavros Niarchos Foundation’s gift is transformational. It confirms the Institute for Ideas and Imagination in its core mission of bringing together the worlds of scholarship and the arts, while enabling us to enhance our international impact at a time when we need more than ever to find new ways of communicating ideas that matter,” said SNF Director of the institute and Ira D. Wallach Professor of History Mark Mazower.

“This generous support from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation will underwrite what has already become one of the world's outstanding residential fellowship programs, attracting brilliant creative artists from around the world and allowing them to mingle with university faculty,” said Columbia University President Lee Bollinger.