Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities
Founded in 2001 and now looking toward its third decade, CRASSH came into being as a way to create interdisciplinary dialogue across the University’s many faculties and departments in the arts, social sciences and humanities, as well as to build bridges with scientific subjects. It has now grown into one of the largest humanities institutes in the world and is a major presence in academic life in the UK. It serves at once to draw together disciplinary perspectives in Cambridge and to disseminate new ideas to audiences across Europe and beyond.
CRASSH’s mission is to create new resources for thought, stimulate interdisciplinary research and disciplinary innovation, establish new intellectual networks and affiliations, respond to emerging social and political challenges, engage new publics in humanities research and help to shape public policy. Its programmes include Visiting Fellowships, Early Career Fellowships for Cambridge academics and a variety of interdisciplinary Research Networks, alongside a conference programme designed to forge new connections and open up fresh intellectual pathways. CRASSH’s research community includes many postdoctoral researchers working on its diverse range of interdisciplinary projects, which often involve international collaborations, and are funded by research councils, charities, trusts and philanthropic donations.
Fellowships
The Centre offers a number of programmes to bring scholars from all over the world to CRASSH – from postdoctoral and early career researchers to more established visiting fellows – to interact at the heart of an innovative and energetic interdisciplinary research environment. As the fellowship community grows, it becomes clearer than ever not only what our visitors gain from access to Cambridge research resources, but also how much they bring to Cambridge: the lively intellectual commerce that energises an international university.
Premises and Facilities
Since 2012, CRASSH has occupied the Alison Richard Building in the University’s central arts and humanities campus on the Sidgwick Site. The Alison Richard Building is the main site of encounter and interchange between students, teachers and researchers in the humanities, and many of the 300 events a year that CRASSH mounts take place there. Most CRASSH fellows and researchers are based in the shared research space in the Centre, and the Cambridge University Library along with the specialist libraries of arts and humanities subjects, are conveniently to hand.