Three from Penn Awarded Fellowship at Institute for Advanced Study

Ada Kuskowski, Associate Professor of History; C. Brian Rose, James B. Pritchard Professor of Archaeology and Professor of Classical Studies; and Robert Strain, Professor of Mathematics, have been selected as Members of the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) for the 2024–25 academic year. This prestigious membership allows for focused research and the free and open exchange of ideas among an international community of scholars at one of the foremost centers for intellectual inquiry.
 
Kuskowski is a medieval and legal historian. Her work has focused on the construction of legal knowledge, especially customary law. While at IAS, she will explore law in the long aftermath of conquest and the formation of colonial legal imaginaries. Through this, she aims to rethink the broad contours of medieval law.
 
Rose, who supervised the excavations at Troy in northwest Turkey, will complete a monograph on Troy’s West Sanctuary, which became tied to the Romans when they began promoting their Trojan ancestry. It also discusses architectural conservation strategies at Troy, and considers how an archaeologist can mishandle the staging of history.
 
Strain’s research focuses on the mathematical analysis of non-linear partial differential equations that arise in physical contexts. He has proven results on partial differential equations from diverse areas, including fluid dynamics, kinetic theory, mathematical biology, and materials science.
 
Each year, IAS welcomes more than 250 postdoctoral researchers and distinguished scholars from around the world to advance fundamental discovery as part of an interdisciplinary and collaborative environment. Visiting scholars are selected through a highly competitive process for their bold ideas, innovative methods, and deep research questions by the permanent faculty—each of whom are preeminent leaders in their fields. Today, research at IAS happens across four Schools—Historical Studies, Mathematics, Natural Sciences, and Social Science.