JIAS - A Home of Ideas

The Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study, directed by Professor Victoria Collis-Buthelezi is as a Global South hub for experimental, groundbreaking, transdisciplinary inquiry and creative practice informed by a commitment to theoretical innovation, social justice, decoloniality, and transformative praxis. 

 
 

  • The Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study (JIAS) is committed to fostering artistic creation, cultural critique, and interdisciplinary collaboration. By supporting research, JIAS advocates for the role of art in shaping society, challenging perspectives, and advancing knowledge. JIAS believes in the power of art to inspire change.

  • The Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study (JIAS) is dedicated to advancing critical scholarship in the social sciences, with a focus on decolonial thought, Global South epistemologies, and the pursuit of epistemic justice. The institute supports scholars, activists, and practitioners in reimagining equitable frameworks for education, research, and social transformation. Committed to inclusivity and intellectual rigor, JIAS serves as a hub for rethinking power, knowledge, and justice from African and Southern perspectives.

  • JIAS champions the transformative potential of digital technologies as tools for liberation. Grounded in the realities of the Global South, JIAS fosters the development of community-rooted technologies that prioritize local knowledge and participatory design to promote frameworks that serve justice, ecological resilience, and collective well-being. Through collaborative experimentation JIAS empowers communities to harness technology as a force for systemic change.

 
 

  • Global Blackness

    Our Global Blackness project brings together scholars, activists, artists, and collectives who seek to meditate on Blackness as a global category of identification and its local iterations across diverse temporalities and geopolitical locations. Learn more

  • AI & Life Matters

    AI & Life Matters research stream launched in 2025 as a space for rethinking digital infrastructures of power and media within a global order of colonial violence, climate injustice, and racial-sexual governance. 

  • Our Values

    Underscoring our renewed vision for JIAS are four key values: Repair, Regard, Community & Connection. We are committed to building a community of scholarship and creative practice, grounded in a Black, feminist, and queer politics of care. Learn more

  • Come To JIAS

    From our micro-campus in Johannesburg, we offer research fellows, artists, writers, and activists-in-residence space and time to develop new ideas and projects, free from the ordinary obligations of academic and professional life.

JIAS at 10 - Join Us

JIAS launched in 2015 as a flagship initiative of the University of Johannesburg. Its mandate is to attract and nurture groundbreaking intellectual work, towards reshaping the direction of higher education not only at UJ, but across South Africa, the African continent and globally.

JIAS is one of three Institutes for Advanced Study (IAS) on the continent, and a member of the University-Based Institutes for Advanced Study (UBIAS).

JIAS offers five fellowship programmes:

  • Writing Fellowships

  • Creative Writing Fellowships

  • Visiting Professorships

  • Research fellowships

  • Postdoctoral Fellowships

Since its inception, JIAS has supported over 170 fellowships and 350 public events, establishing itself as a key site for critical enquiry and community in Johannesburg. Each Director has brought unique ideas, projects, and value to the Institute. The team at JIAS remains indebted to these visionary individuals for their distinctive contributions.