The complex questions confronting humanity demand an interdisciplinary approach. Artificial intelligence, climate change, health and disease, the global economy, migration and the future of democratic societies cannot be understood through the lens of any single discipline.

Why science needs the humanities more than ever

Yet, the need for a broad outlook and the free flow of ideas has become urgent just when the world is facing the headwinds of rising geopolitical tensions, shrinking financial resources and growing barriers to international academic exchange. Today, research and scholarship need more collaboration between nations, not less.

The question is whether our current research structures are adequately equipped for the task at hand. Most academic institutions are organized around departments, disciplines, funding streams and established research agendas, which are essential for organizational coherence but can constrain ideas that do not fit neatly within existing boundaries.

Although many excellent interdisciplinary organizations have been set up around the world — including at our own institutions, which have long championed a culture of transcending borders — most focus on a particular field or research theme and do not necessarily involve people convening physically as a group over sustained periods of time.

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Addressing today’s global challenges at pace demands radical thinking across disciplines — similar to how scientists thought up quantum mechanics, the general theory of relativity and ideas that led to the creation of fields such as behavioural economics, systems biology and artificial intelligence.

This requires throwing open the doors to collaboration, across the entire intellectual spectrum of science, social sciences and the humanities. It also demands forums in which talented collaborators can come together for months at a time.

That’s why our institutions have teamed up to launch the Advanced Research Consortium (ARC), a joint interdisciplinary programme between the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, the Max Planck Society in Munich, Germany, and the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. Here, we set out how it will work and encourage academics to apply to our programmes in the coming year and beyond.

Freedom to think

Launched on 22 October in Berlin, ARC’s mission is to foster fundamental, curiosity-driven research by providing the conditions for promising collaborations to do their most innovative work and get their most important ideas off the ground.

Scholars from science, social sciences and the humanities will physically gather in working groups and put aside their day-to-day responsibilities to pursue ambitious questions of their choice that might breach conventional disciplinary and intellectual boundaries. The main requirement is collaboration.

ARC will be housed in the historic Otto-Warburg-Haus, which was built for that Nobel laureate, and scholars will be housed nearby.

The consortium will have neither permanent faculty members nor a predefined research agenda. Rather than asking researchers to fit their questions into an existing institutional structure, the structure will form around their ideas. Thus, the consortium’s trajectory will be continually renewed by its participants and the questions they raise.

This flexible, open rubric will offer scholars from around the world time and freedom to pursue truly ambitious research that might not have had the chance to take root in conventional academic settings.

The objective is not to offer researchers new sabbatical opportunities, nor simply to bring outstanding scholars into the same building. Rather, it is to temporarily relocate them from the day-to-day demands of their usual occupations, placing them in proximity to other exceptional minds, with no requirements of output other than pursuing their most ambitious collaboration.

We cannot — and should not — prescribe in advance what the outcomes will be. They might be discoveries, innovative methods, unexpected collaborations, entirely new questions or ideas, the significance of which might become apparent only years later.

Invest in the unknown

ARC will roll out its programmes over the coming year. Collaborative research will be pursued under two programmes, to accommodate various stages of intellectual exploration. The Exploratory Programs will bring together small groups of up to six researchers for up to four weeks. These intensive encounters will allow scholars to propose and flesh out emerging ideas and determine whether a question merits deeper investigation. The Core Programs will support longer-term collaborations lasting up to one year, with as many as 20 researchers at any given time.

Beyond the collaborative programmes, we felt it was also important to offer postdoctoral fellowships, to provide early-career scientists with lifelong connections and possibilities for collaboration that could shape the trajectory of their research. The Postdoctoral Fellowship Program will support up to ten researchers annually, each for four years, supplying full postdoc salaries. The fellows will divide their time between two of the three founding institutions. As ARC grows, extra programmes might be developed to support new forms of collaboration.

ARC will fully fund participants throughout their residencies in Berlin. The consortium is financially backed by its three founding institutions, each of which has committed its share of funds to establish ARC. As the partnership develops, support from philanthropy will be essential to funding more research projects.