The Bloomington Symposia

A NEW IAS INITIATIVE to help incubate greater collaborative exchange and research vitality on campus and beyond. 

These cross-disciplinary events will bring together a 'team' of local scholars and researchers with a group of external thinkers in a 2 to 3 day working group on a timely topic of mutual concern. 

Participants will collaborate on a common bibliography; share relevant examples, evidence, or artifacts from their own research; and engage in common conversation about the diversity and range of disciplinary perpsectives, and the methological, conceptual and interpretative issues that emerge. Research outputs will vary depending on the resulting collaborations. 

Faculty are welcome to contact the Institute at ias@indiana.edu with questions or suggested topics. 

TBS: Contagion 2021

APRIL 22-24, 2021

As a means to inaugurate this new initiative, the focus for the inaugural symposium will be “Contagion,” broadly construed. The topic is obviously an urgent one. But precisely because of the current global pandemic we have increasingly come to understand research on “Contagion” as extending across wide disciplinary perimeters. From the obviously crucial fields of epidemiology, virology, bio-statistics, and public health, our understanding of contagion is aided by social science and humanities disciplines: sociology, history, anthropology, medical humanities, rhetoric, political science, supply chain management, governance, mathematics, art, architectural design, literatures from a range of languages, folklore, science fiction, media studies, journalism, international affairs, law, educational policy and leadership, diplomacy and policy studies, to name the most obvious.

Link to Contagion TBS 2021 Program Information