i have just received the news that i have been awarded a Fellowship for the 3rd University-based Institutes for Advanced Study (UBIAS) Intercontinental Academia (ICA), themed on Laws: rigidity and dynamics, hosted by the University of Birmingham and the Nanyang Technological University in 2018 / 2019.
all praise be to God alone.
the ICA will convene over two workshops - one to be held in Singapore in March 2018 and the second in Birmingham in March 2019. through these workshops, i will have the opportunity not only to meet and interact with about fifteen other Fellows from around the world, but to also be mentored by a multi-disciplinary team of academic faculty, including two Nobel Laureates.
through these interactions, the ICA seeks to create a global network of research leaders by constructing opportunities for early / mid-career scholars to work together on cross-disciplinary research.
for the 3rd ICA, the theme of Laws: rigidity and dynamics was chosen because the concept of laws has different meanings in different settings, cultures, and to individuals. As participants, we will be invited to structure conversations about the origins of laws and the tensions among them.
What i personally find intriguing about the theme of the 2018 / 2019 Intercontinental Academia is the creative potential which likely lies in discussions and interactions at the nexus between - for want of better terms - ‘intuitions’ and ‘laws’.
Thus, for example, when do intuitions become codified in to laws? Conversely, when one attempts to unpack or deconstruct laws - both in the natural sciences and in the social sciences and humanities - to what extent can they be traced to the intuitions which novices have developed from their respective lived environments? Further, along the trajectory from novice to expert, how might the Disciplinary Intuitions (Lim, 2015) co-inform the respective canonical ‘laws’?
It is my hope that - through participation in the Intercontinental Academia 2018 / 2019 - some frames of inquiry in to these and similar questions might be crafted, in collaboration with my fellow participants and with the mentors.
