The institute was launched in 2006 with a debate between university chancellor
Bill Bryson, historian
Peter Watson and science journalist
Matt Ridley. The topic for the first year was the legacy of
Charles Darwin, culminating in a conference titled "What Makes a Racist?", with participants including
John Hedley Brooke,
Robin Dunbar,
John Dupre,
Anthony Monaco and
Madeleine Bunting. In 2009, the institute's work was showcased in a collection of short essays by experts from across the arts, science and humanities,
Thinking About Almost Everything: New Ideas to Light up Minds. The same year, the institute hosted an exhibition of sculptures by
Jane Alexander,
On Being Human, at
Durham Cathedral, inspired by the "Being Human" theme of the ISC in 2008/09, with an associated public debate held at
Durham Town Hall. Later in that year, ISC fellow and artist-in-residence
Ranjitsinh Gaekwad was commissioned to produce a sculpture,
Vessels of Life, at the
university's botanic garden, inspired by the ISC's 2009/10 theme of "Water". In 2010, the institute became one of three British founder-members (with the
School of Advanced Study at the
University of London and the
Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities at the
University of Cambridge) of the global University-Based Institutes for Advanced Study network at a meeting at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies. In 2011, Indian filmmaker and IAS fellow Sudheer Gupta launched the film
Black River Business contrasting the state of the river
Yamuna in Delhi with the successful clean-up of the Tyne, Tees and Wear, that he made during his fellowship at the institute. In 2015, the institute published
Evaluating Interdisciplinary Research: A Practical Guide. In 2017, institute director
Veronica Strang was appointed to
HEFCE's interdisciplinary advisory panel, in what she called an "acknowledgement of the IAS’s contribution to thinking about interdisciplinarity". This was set up in 2017 to advise on how to address issues encountered by interdisciplinary research in the
Research Excellence Framework (REF), which had been highlighted in 2016 by the
Stern Review following the 2014 REF. In a 2018 conference on the future of the humanities, Strang, speaking as the director of the IAS, stressed the need for interdisciplinary research and for interdisciplinary centres to be academically and managerially independent from faculties, and to have representation on core institutional bodies and support from senior leadership. In the 2018/19 academic year, the IAS changed the structure of its research programme from concentrating on a single overarching theme for a year to supporting four major research projects each year. A major research project on Ukraine in Michaelmas (autumn) term 2004 involving researchers from Durham and IAS fellows from Ukraine contributed to the establishment of Durham University's Centre for the Study of Ukraine in 2025. From January 2025, the IAS at Durham, the
Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in Uppsala and the College of Fellows at the
University of Tübingen have hosted visiting academics from other universities in the
Matariki Network of Universities. The IAS also had a long-term collaborative projects with the Tübingen College of Fellows from 2024 to 2026. == Management ==