New Grant in France for Research on Contemporary Thought

The Columbia Global Paris Center is pleased to announce a new partnership with the Institut Mémoires de l’Édition Contemporaine (IMEC)—one of Europe’s most important archival institutions. 

To support original research engaging with contemporary thought—especially through archival inquiry—the Contemporary Thought Archival Research Grant offers a unique opportunity for scholars working across disciplines. The selected grantee will receive a €3,000 grant, and spend three weeks in residence at the Abbaye d’Ardenne, followed or preceded by one week at Reid Hall in Paris.

This collaboration will officially begin in September 2025 with the inauguration of the Jean Baudrillard Program.

The inaugural grant is dedicated to producing a piece of original research in the Baudrillard archives held at IMEC and Reid Hall.

Founded in 1988, IMEC is located at the historic Abbaye d’Ardenne, near Caen in Normandy, and preserves a vast and unique collection of literary, intellectual, and artistic archives. IMEC’s mission is not only to conserve these materials but to make them available for critical inquiry and creative research. 

Among the major thinkers whose archives are housed at IMEC is Jean Baudrillard, the philosopher and sociologist whose work on simulation, hyperreality, and postmodernity shaped late 20th-century critical theory. 

In 2017, Baudrillard’s personal archives—including manuscripts, notebooks, interviews, and thematic files—were entrusted to IMEC. These documents offer unprecedented insight into his working methods and intellectual development. 

Meanwhile, his private library—nearly 1,500 volumes across literature, philosophy, and art criticism, over 300 of them annotated—has been deposited at the Reid Hall library. This collection represents not only the breadth of his reading but the dialogic process through which he constructed many of his key concepts.

The program encourages multidisciplinary and research-creation approaches, and is open to PhD candidates and postdoctoral researchers (within five years of their dissertation defense). In exchange, the grantee will submit a 20,000-character article to IMEC and the Columbia Global Paris Center and may also be invited to contribute to future institutional publications.

Full application details, including eligibility and submission requirements, are available online.

Application Deadline: July 27, 2025
Announcement of Recipient: September 24, 2025