The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University fosters transformative works in the arts, humanities, sciences, and social sciences. Each year, approximately fifty women and men arrive in Cambridge to undertake research and creative work as Radcliffe Institute fellows. Scientists, composers, fiction writers, filmmakers, historians, lawyers, literary critics, social scientists, and teachers all convene to interrogate, ponder—and sometimes reinvent—our understanding of the world. The Institute is also home to the unparalleled collections of the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library, the preeminent library for the study of American women.

Embodying the highest values of inquiry, learning, and creativity, the Radcliffe Institute is an integral part of Harvard University. It enriches the University's intellectual life by creating links between its fellows and Harvard schools and departments, and by making its broad range of lectures and conferences, as well as research and learning opportunities, available to Harvard students and faculty. The Radcliffe Institute serves as an intellectual convening force across Harvard's schools and as a site for interdisciplinary collaboration.

Women, Gender, and Society: A Continuing Commitment

The Radcliffe Institute sustains a special commitment to the study of women, gender, and society, and its research and programming include a substantial gender component. Recent fellows have explored issues related to women in law, music, the economy, medicine and health, religion, literature, and history, in settings from early modern Italy and nineteenth-century Iran to contemporary China, India, and the United States. The Institute holds a major conference on women each year, initiating discussion of topics such as the relationship of women to money and power, the place of African American women in United States history, and reproductive health.

The Schlesinger Library

For over half a century, Radcliffe's Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America has been critical to our expanding understanding of women's history. Its priceless collections include the papers of Susan B. Anthony, Julia Child, Shirley Graham Du Bois, Amelia Earhart, Betty Friedan, Pauli Murray, Adrienne Rich, and other notable women.

Ideas That Reach Beyond Radcliffe Yard

The Radcliffe Institute provides public programming in an effort to reach beyond its walls and share its riches, including its collections, programs, and the work of faculty and fellows. The annual Dean's Lecture Series brings luminaries in the arts, academic disciplines, and professions to the Radcliffe Institute for public talks. Speakers have included author Zadie Smith, copyright lawyer Lawrence Lessig, historian Darlene Clark Hine, biologist Susan Lindquist, and philosopher Avishai Margalit. The Radcliffe Institute's conference topics reflect its broad mission and range from computer security to feminism in the 1960s and 1970s, from cultural citizenship to gender in the war zone. Harvard undergraduate students may participate in the Radcliffe Institute's work through the Research Partnership Program, acting as research assistants to Institute faculty and fellows.

The Radcliffe Institute is rooted in a belief in the power of intellectual connections and intellectual community. Through thought-provoking public programming and innovative research, the Radcliffe Institute reinforces and extends the results of that community and those connections into the world beyond Radcliffe Yard.  

Academic Leadership

The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study is led by Dean Barbara J. Grosz, the Higgins Professor of Natural Sciences in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, who serves along with Harvard's fourteen other deans on the President's Academic Advisory Group. Radcliffe's academic leadership also includes Homi K. Bhabha, senior advisor in the humanities at the Radcliffe Institute, Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of English in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and director of the Humanities Center at Harvard; Nancy F. Cott, the Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation Director of the Schlesinger Library and Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences; Stephen M. Kosslyn, senior advisor in psychology and neuroscience at the Radcliffe Institute, John Lindsley Professor of Psychology and chair of the psychology department; and Jennifer Leaning, senior advisor in international and policy studies at the Radcliffe Institute, professor of international health in the Harvard School of Public Health, and assistant professor of medicine in the Harvard Medical School. 

Alumnae Support

Mindful of its roots in the Radcliffe College tradition of academic excellence and commitment to women, the Radcliffe Institute continues to recognize and serve alumnae of Radcliffe College through the Office of Alumnae Services. This office provides ongoing support of events such as Radcliffe Day and class reunions for the Classes of 1962 and earlier. 

In July 2000, Harvard University President Rudenstine invited a group of distinguished scholars and academic leaders from outside Harvard to form a special ad hoc committee to assist Dean Drew Gilpin Faust and the Institute in outlining more precisely directions for the years ahead. In February 2001, the committee issued its Report of the Radcliffe Institute Ad Hoc Committee.

For more information about the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, please call 617-495-8601 or e-mail info@radcliffe.edu.