ABOUT KIAS

The Kule Institute for Advanced Study (KIAS) is a major endowed research institute based at the University of Alberta, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. KIAS supports interdisciplinary and collaborative research in the Social Sciences, Humanities, and Fine Arts at the University of Alberta, focusing on research with the potential for national or international recognition.

KIAS ENDOWMENT PURPOSE:

To fund in perpetuity the Kule Institute for Advanced Study (KIAS) as an interdisciplinary and comparative research institute that fosters an innovative intellectual environment for the study of major modern and historical, political, social, and cultural issues and therein, advances society and global polity in a manner consistent with the high humanitarian ideals of the founding donors.

KIAS VISION:

Fundamental to the Kules’ ideals are the history and culture of Ukraine and its global legacy. In memory and respect for those who suffered, challenged, or inspired Ukrainian history and culture through the millennia, KIAS scholars will undertake research in the humanities, social sciences, and fine arts that will foster greater understanding of the complex and broad human issues that such a history and legacy invoke such as political oppression, diaspora studies, folklore, multiculturalism, minorities, the meanings of cultural identity, religious persecution, the politics of famine, and food distribution, the World Wars, and revolution, the environment, the Canadian and European North, global peace and conflict, and other themes that emerge as researchers attempt to create greater understand of the most important issues of the day.

KIAS MISSION:

To facilitate transformational interdisciplinary and comparative research at the highest level nationally and internationally, guided by the ideals of Peter and Doris Kule, the legacies of Ukrainian history, and the purpose of research and learning at the University of Alberta, articulated by President Henry Marshall Tory in 1908: “the Uplifting of the Whole People.”

KIAS GOAL:

To establish KIAS as a globally recognized institute of interdisciplinary and comparative research excellence within five years of inauguration by linking University of Alberta undergraduate and graduate student researchers and professors, Kule Post-Doctoral Fellows, and distinguished visiting researchers from around the world in and across disciplines, so as to stimulate original ways of thinking, initiate new lines of inquiry, and incubate innovative ideas.