Institute of Human Sciences

The Institute for Human Sciences (IWM) is an institute for advanced study in the humanities and social sciences. Founded as a place of encounter in 1982 by a young Polish philosopher, Krzysztof Michalski, and two German colleagues in neutral Austria, its initial mission was to create a meeting place for dissenting thinkers of Eastern Europe and prominent scholars from the West.

Since then, it has promoted intellectual exchange across disciplines, between academia and society, and among regions that now embrace the Global South and North. The IWM is an independent and non-partisan institution, and proudly so. All of IWM’s fellows, visiting and permanent, pursue their own research in an environment designed to enrich their work and to render it more accessible within and beyond academia.

IWM’s work sustains three guiding themes: Encounter and Solidarity, Encounters in Democracy and Encounters with Europe. Within them, its permanent fellows create research projects and run programs that permit it to invite around a hundred distinguished guests—as well as senior and junior visiting fellows—to Vienna each year.