Columbia University is opening a new academic outpost in Paris next year.

From autumn 2018, some 14 fellows will be working at the Ivy League institution¡¯s new Institute for Ideas and Imagination, which will be based at the university¡¯s Reid Hall study centre in the Montparnasse area.

Half the fellows will be Columbia faculty members and the rest will be scholars, writers and creative artists, who will begin a one-year residency from autumn 2018.

The new centre will be led by Mark Mazower, the Ira D. Wallach professor of world order studies in Columbia¡¯s department of history, who will be the institute¡¯s first director.

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Announcing the new in an email to Columbia staff and students, Lee C. Bollinger, the president of Columbia University, said that the new centre was ¡°the outcome of several years of reflection and discussion¡±.

¡°±õ²Ô , we will seek to identify early career scholars and individuals from beyond traditional academic pursuits [who are] inclined to challenge prevailing intellectual habits,¡± said Professor Bollinger.

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¡°The goal of combining Columbia faculty with intellectuals, artists and writers who operate outside American academia ¨C in both a geographic and a disciplinary sense ¨C is to foster conversations that introduce new perspectives to the university and, ultimately, across higher education.¡±?

Professor Bollinger explained that the institute¡¯s ¡°defining commitments will be to intellectual innovation and intercultural dialogue, for these are the values essential to producing new thinking about academia¡¯s central task, which is to contribute to the deep and long-lasting reflection that frames how our contemporary world understands the challenges we face¡±.?

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com