to the National Humanities Center
News Release Date: May 8, 2012
Research Triangle Park, N.C. At a ceremony on May 2 the National Humanities Center (NHC) signed an agreement to bring exceptional young scholars from Sweden to work at the Center as one of the international partners in the Pro Futura Scientia program.
Launched in 1999 by the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study (SCAS) in collaboration with The Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, the Pro Futura Scientia program selects promising young scholars in the social sciences and humanities and provides them with five years of support, allowing them to complete a major work or prepare a new project. During the course of the fellowship, Pro Futura scholars spend 1 1/2 years at the SCAS, 2 1/2 years at their nominating university (with a reduced teaching load), and 1 year abroad at leading international institutes for advanced study such as the National Humanities Center.
The Pro Futura Scientia program has been immensely successful in finding and nurturing emerging academic leaders. In little more than a decade since beginning, scholars from the program have been appointed to the most prestigious chair professorships, elected to research councils and royal academies, and asked to chair academic senates. The program has also achieved a strong reputation internationally and, beginning in 2012, will invite four leading universities in other Nordic countries to propose candidates to the next round of Pro Futura Fellows.
"The opportunity to work alongside other outstanding scholars and build professional relationships with those in other fields and at other institutions is essential to the development of young academic leaders," said Björn Wittrock, principal of the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, "and the National Humanities Center is one of the best places in the world for humanists to pursue their research among peers from the US and other countries."
"We are extremely pleased to collaborate with our colleagues in Sweden and have these gifted young scholars join the National Humanities Center's research community," said Geoffrey Harpham, the Center's president and director. "We have been fortunate over the years to have Fellows from many nations at the Center, and this collaboration with the Pro Futura Scientia program furthers and strengthens that important tradition."
About the National Humanities Center
The National Humanities Center, located in the Research Triangle Park of North Carolina, is a privately incorporated independent institute for advanced study in the humanities. Since 1978 the Center has awarded fellowships to more than 1,200 scholars in the humanities, whose work at the Center has resulted in the publication of more than 1,400 books in all fields of humanistic study. The Center also sponsors programs to strengthen the teaching of the humanities in secondary and higher education and hosts a variety of lectures, conferences, concerts, art exhibits and other events that highlight the continuing contributions of the humanities and encourage meaningful consideration of important topics with broad intellectual and public interest.