II&I - Snfphi

04/30/2026

🎙️On February 19, 2026, the Institute for Ideas and Imagination had the pleasure of welcoming acclaimed soprano and conductor Barbara Hannigan .barbara to Reid Hall to deliver the fourth annual Sidney N. Zubrow Memorial Lecture. In the Grande Salle Ginsberg-LeClerc, Hannigan presented Resonance, Flow and Surrender in the Creative Process, offering an in-depth reflection on artistic collaboration and the creative journey behind new music for the operatic and concert stage.

Her presentation was followed by a discussion with Nicholas Spice, fiction writer, critic, and consulting publisher to the London Review of Books.

The Institute is deeply grateful to Edward, Betsy, and Daniel Cohen for making this lecture possible.

04/29/2026

📣We’re proud to announce our 2026–27 Fellows! 📣

🙌🏻Bringing together innovative scholars with some of the world’s most exciting young film-makers and photographers, writers and poets, visual artists and composers, the Institute for Ideas and Imagination is proud to announce the Fellowship cohort which will be joining us in Paris in September 2026.

💫Working on a range of topics from environmental crisis seen through the fading senses of touch and sound to the American civil war and the jurisprudence of authoritarianism, from the ambiguities of so-called peacekeeping in the borderlands of the old Soviet Union to empire and exile in southeastern Asia, Institute Fellows will present their work throughout the year in the SNF Rendez-Vous lecture series (opened to the public). 🗓️ The calendar will be published soon.

List below:
Marcos Balter (Music), Fyzal Boulifa (Filmmaker), Julia Doe (Music), Sasha Dugdale,(Poet and Translator), Ella Frears (Poet), Gil Z. Hochberg (Comparative Literature and Middle East Studies), Madhav Khosla (Law), Stephanie McCurry, Director’s Council Fellow (History), Christina Nakou (Visual Artist), Verena Paravel, Abigail R. Cohen Fellow (Filmmaker), Tako Robakidze, Czernecki Educational Foundation Fellow (Photographer), Camila Rodríguez Triana, Getty Global Art & Sustainability Fellow (Visual Artist), Emmanuelle Saada (French History), Trương Minh Quý (Filmmaker), Timothy Vasko (Religion).

The Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination is made possible by the generous support of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) , the Areté Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and Daniel Cohen, with additional gifts from the EHA Foundation, Pierre-Alexis Dumas and Sophie Bouilhet-Dumas, the Getty , the Czernecki Educational Foundation, Judith Ginsberg and Paul LeClerc; Tom and Maarit Glocer, James Leitner and Tracy Higgins, Gerald Rosberg, Olga and George Votis; Lee C. and Jean Magnano Bollinger, Fondation Louis Roederer, and Mel and Lois Tukman. We thank you all for your generous support. ✨

04/21/2026

On Thursday, April 23rd SNFPHI awardee Artemis Chaleplioglou will present the ongoing work of her project "The Book Club: Book Sharing in the Small Cyclades" at the annual conference of the Association of Greek Librarians & Information Scientists at the Historical Library of the Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation

The conference will take place from April 22 to 24 on the topic: "Spaces of knowledge and memory: Redefining the image of libraries, archives and museums in a changing world."

Artemis will address the social role of libraries with her talk "Book distribution in the Communities of the Small Cyclades / Διαμοιρασμός βιβλίων στις Κοινότητες των Μικρών Κυκλάδων."

🔗Click on the link for the full program: https://co2026.eebep.gr/

🔗Learn more about the project here: https://snfphi.columbia.edu/projects/the-book-club-book-sharing-in-the-small-cyclades/

04/13/2026

On Wednesday, April 29th, Associate Director of the SNFPHI, Dimitris Antoniou, will participate in an online seminar on public humanities titled:

🔹Public Humanities Studies: From the amphitheater to the public space🔹

The seminar is co-organized by the Research Laboratory for Modern Greek and Comparative Philology of the Department of Humanities at the Democritus University of Thrace.

📲Scan the QR to register for the seminar and receive the Zoom link. Registration closes on Tuesday, April 28th at 12:00 PM EST.

04/09/2026

Please join us on Tuesday, April 21st for the final University Seminar in Modern Greek of the academic year. Lilia Diamantopoulou (LMU Munich) will present:

🔹The Black Lover of the Queen: A moving story of Markos Abessinios at the Greek Bavarian Royal Court🔹

The seminar is co-sponsored by the Program in Hellenic Studies Columbia University.

📆Date: Tuesday, April 21st
🕕Time: 4:00 - 5:30 PM EST
📍Location: Faculty House & Online
⬇️Visit our website to register and to read about entry rules:

In this seminar Lilia Diamantopoulou (LMU Munich) will explore the life of Markos Abessinios, whose trajectory from enslaved child in Abyssinia to courtier in the Greek Bavarian monarchy and later merchant in Munich offers a rare lens on Black mobility in nineteenth century Europe. At the center is....

04/01/2026

📚🗣️ In this , Filmmaker Payal Kapadia , acclaimed for her award-winning work at the Cannes Film Festival and celebrated for her poetic, politically attuned storytelling, and sound producer Adila Bennedjaï-Zou , whose practice centers on immersive sound design and nuanced sonic narratives, have spent this year together as Institute Fellows. Together, they reflect on their approaches to sound and interviews, how these elements are woven into their creative processes, and the ways they shape the emotional and narrative depth of their projects.

You can watch the full conversation on our Youtube channel or our Spotify account, the links are in our bio 🔗

filmmaker

03/30/2026

🎶🌊 Bones, Rocks and Jackhammers
A Portrait Concert by Finola Merivale
📅 April 30, 2026 | 7 p.m.
📍 Reid Hall | 4, rue de Chevreuse, 75006 Paris
🎟️ Free | Registration required
🔗 Register link in our bio

From New York to Paris to the wild coastline of the West of Ireland, Bones, Rocks and Jackhammers is a concert reflecting on place, nature, and the environment. In this evocative program of solo works with electronics, composer Finola Merivale—named one of the “23 composers to watch” by The Washington Post—explores microtonality, multi-tracking, and improvisation.

This portrait concert celebrates the launch of her album Abhaile (Irish for “home”), created in close collaboration with saxophonist Catherine Sikora. The program brings together works for saxophone and electronics alongside pieces for violin and electronics, performed by Maya Bennardo. 🎧🎻

The evening opens with a conversation between Finola Merivale and pianist Magdalena Stern-Baczewska, Director of the Music Performance Program at Columbia University and Fellow at the Institute for Ideas and Imagination.

Organized by the Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination with the generous support of the Columbia Global Paris Center , FEDORA , Culture Ireland , the Centre Culturel Irlandais , and the Embassy of Ireland in France .

03/27/2026

Thank you to SNFPHI awardee Brikena Gishto for an engaging presentation at this week's University Seminar in Modern Greek! We are grateful for a new collaboration with the Program in the Education of the Deaf & Hard of Hearing at Teacher's College. Special thanks to Columbia University Disability Services for providing ASL interpretation and CART services for this event.

03/27/2026

📚🗣️ In this , Professor and team leader at ESPCI Paris Gisella Vetere joins Bianca Jones Marlin, neuroscientist and Herbert and Florence Irving Assistant Professor of Cell Research at the Zuckerman Institute at Columbia University in New York City, to discuss neuroscience. During her Faculty Visitorship at Reid Hall, Marlin investigated how organisms unlock innate behaviors at the appropriate times, and how learned information can be transmitted across generations through transgenerational epigenetic inheritance.

👏🏼We thank both for this amazing conversation.

You can watch the full conversation on the link on our bio 🔗

03/23/2026

🎬 On March 12, 2026, the Institute for Ideas and Imagination welcomed filmmaker and Fellow Payal Kapadia to Reid Hall for a special screening of her acclaimed film (2024).

The screening was followed by a discussion with Payal Kapadia (director), Clément Pinteaux (editor), Ranabir Das (cinematographer), and Thomas Hakim (French producer), offering audiences deeper insight into the film’s creation and themes. .rpx .hakim

✨If you missed the conversation, you can watch it on our YouTube channel (link in bio).

Presented in the Grande Salle Ginsberg-LeClerc, this award-winning feature marked the first Indian film in thirty years to compete at the Cannes Film Festival, where it received the Grand Prix. The film has continued its remarkable international run, including nominations at the 2025 Golden Globes and the Best Film Prize at the 2025 Asian Film Awards.

The Institute extends its sincere thanks to Payal Kapadia, her crew, and all who joined us for this special evening.

Special thanks to the members of the .cine student association from for their enthusiasm in helping initiate the Q&A.

paris

03/13/2026

The SNFPHI is pleased to announce that we are now accepting applications for our annual Summer Grants in Public Humanities and Hellenic Studies.

These grants support Columbia graduate students and recent MA, MFA, and PhD recipients interested in pursuing research in public humanities and Hellenic Studies through an independent project or in collaboration with a current SNFPHI project.

🔗Visit our website to learn more: https://snfphi.columbia.edu/grants-for-columbia-students/