As the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS) celebrates its 25th anniversary, JEAN MEIRING learns from its founding and current directors what it means for the town, South Africa and Africa.
“WHERE’S EINSTEIN?” It’s a question I muse upon, half-ironically, when I visit the Wallenberg Research Centre, that acme of sleek Scandinavian modernism that lies at the edge of campus, between the Jan Marais Nature Reserve and Jonkershoek Road.
Turning from Marais Street into the home of the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS) is like being transported into a cloistered world that has quiet reflection as its raison d’être.
One thinks of Princeton, the university town in New Jersey where the first and archetypal Institute for Advanced Study was founded in 1930.The Bamberger siblings, having made a king’s ransom in their department store in Newark, were afflicted by that most salutary of American vices: they wished to endow something that would serve the public weal – and for a long time.
They approached Abraham Flexner, a giant of educational reform ,who persuaded them that rather than financing the likes of a new dental school, they should support a nascent project of his: a contemplative space free of the fetters – deadlines, meetings, research rosters –that hem in university life.
It was on that island of intellectual civility and idealism that Albert Einstein, the Jewish German physicist and 1921 Nobel laureate, found refuge in 1933, when Hitler and his Nazis were tub-thumping their way to power. STIAS was cut to that Princeton pattern and now, celebrating its 25-year anniversary, still aspires to Flexner’s ideals.
My research has revealed the complex world of establishments known as Institutes for (or sometimes ‘of’) Advanced Study(IAS). Recently, there has been a flowering worldwide of a sub-category of these institutes that are housed within universities. The Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study is one, and it reports to one of the University of Johannesburg’s vice-rectors. To learn more about STIAS I meet, in the ether, Prof. Edward Kirumira, since 2019 the institute’s third director, and Prof. Bernard Lategan, its founding director.
Prof. Lategan explains that STIAS conforms to a different type. “From day one, most of us involved in setting it up were adamant that STIAS would be independent, with its own board of directors. ”There were several motives for this, he says. “It might attract scholars wary of visiting Stellenbosch University (SU) because of its history (this was shortly after the end of apartheid); it couldn’t be a national facility if it were part of a specific university; and it could better attract external funding. Eventually, all were proved right.
”In 2007, two years after the Marianne and Marcus Wallenberg Foundation had paid to expand the home of STIAS on the Mostertsdrift site, and in the face of push-back at the highest level, SU’s council resolved that STIAS would indeed be independent. The university’s rector does, however, serve on its board. And in November that year, the Wallenberg Research Centre was opened.
STIAS is still the only autonomous Institute for Advanced Study in Africa. But, of course, it’s not all bricks and mortar, however aesthetically pleasing. Prof. Lategan adds, “The history of STIAS is that of an idea. Nurturing ‘a creative space for the mind’ set the ethos of STIAS and its work. It entails a commitment to quality, encouraging new thinking and stimulating creative ideas.
“This is pursued in an institute for advanced study, which describes the level and nature of its activities. The focus is on the frontiers of science, exploring new possibilities and expanding the horizons of knowledge .”
STIAS caters for all disciplines, supporting work that is interdisciplinary but of a specific nature.
“The aim”, continues Prof. Lategan, “is not a collection of random ‘studies’ – as the misnomer ‘institute for advanced studies’ suggests– nor a general exchange of ideas, but to bring together the leading scholars in their respective fields in a place that aids deep and fundamental interaction.
”In 2018, STIAS was invited to join Some Institutes for Advanced Study, a consortium of the 10 premier institutes worldwide, including the IAS in Princeton. In this group, Prof. Lategan interjects, “ironically, STIAS plays a leading role”.
In January 2019, Prof. Kirumira, who hails from Uganda, was appointed the director of STIAS. “I’m in the first year of my second and last five-year term. How time flies!
”Casting his mind back, “I was attracted by the motto ‘a creative space for the mind’ and by STIAS having joined Some Institutes for Advanced Study,” he explains. “STIAS was, and is, a beacon for South Africa and Africa. I saw it as an African fireplace, where knowledge is nurtured, wisdom shared and academic traditions passed on to the next generation. I was from a traditional university-based environment. Given its autonomy, STIAS let me bring my continental and international networks to bear, to expand the footprint of STIAS in Africa
It was important for me to build out the vision of Africa in conversation with the rest of the world – on the African continent and on an equal footing. ”
At the core of STIAS is its fellowship programme. Excellent scholars spend time here, yet their productivity during their sojourn is not measured by output. Whatever laurels they attain from the work they do here belong to their home institution.
While STIAS has a quiet presence at the fringe of a busy university, the benefits that come from its important visitors are made to ripple out not only to SU, but to other South African and African universities. Prof. Kirumira explains, “Once a cohort of fellows is selected, we share their identities with all South Africa’s universities and say ‘They will be with us for the next five months. Do you wish to engage?’ If a fellow is amenable, there’s scope for collaboration. ”
A remarkable network of STIAS alumni has developed. “It’s quite something if you can put on your CV that you were a STIAS fellow, ”declares Prof. Kirumira.
In 2017, STIAS introduced Iso Lomso (‘the eye of tomorrow’ in isiXhosa), a mid-career fellowship programme. Now in its eighth iteration, Iso Lomso has become a flagship, aligned with the drive into Africa. It is, as Prof. Kirumira observes, one of the most distinguished and generous such programmes on the continent. “It proves that the continent should, and can, grow its own timber!” he quips. “We’ve offered fellowships to scholars from 16 African countries in all academic disciplines. There have been 60 fellows, plus 27 visiting scholars. The applications are in the hundreds for only 10 annually awarded three-year fellowships .”
A third string to STIAS’s bow is the series of symposia styled ‘Nobel in Africa’ and fashioned around the Nobel Prize categories. They bring to Stellenbosch contingents of Nobel laureates and some of the world’s most distinguished scholars. STIAS is the first institution beyond Scandinavia to host such symposia for the Nobel Foundation.
Prof. Kirumira says, “The symposia have far surpassed expectations, giving STIAS incredible visibility. Although the sessions are closed, we said that it doesn’t make sense for 50 scientific greats to visit and for that to have no wider impact. So each symposium is accompanied by an outreach programme.”
The second round of six symposia will start in November 2025 and will include one on literature: ‘Retrieving Pasts, Imagining Futures: Creative Forms in African Writing’.
STIAS’s birthday celebrations are scheduled to take place on10 March 2025, as is the opening of expanded facilities at the Wallenberg Research Centre. Although constantly in use, the premises are a shelter for the fellows, while the garden provides a tranquil space for focused work. Left to their own devices, the fellows make contact with those on the outside only if they specifically choose to.
So although the chance of running into a shaggy-haired, theorem-muttering Einstein is pretty slim, his soaring spirit pervades the precious grove of contemplation that STIAS has become.