Home Page

The Institute for the Public Life of Arts and Ideas (IPLAI) reflects McGill’s commitment to the humanities and is dedicated to advancing humanities-based teaching and research in innovative and interdisciplinary ways.

IPLAI is committed to understanding how the arts (literature, painting, film, theatre, music, industrial and artistic design, architecture) and new ideas come into being in a range of settings (schools, the law courts, markets, the Web, the book trade, state institutions) and in relation to social, cultural, and institutional practices. It also strives to understand how art and ideas are able to transform the private world of the individual, the greater world of public matters, and the interactivity between the two. The focus, then, is on the dynamic life of art and ideas—their relationship to public and private life; their connection to a range of social practices; their formative passage through or continuing existence in education, business, religion, and law; their embeddedness in collective and individual action, feeling, expression, and cognition; and their contribution to remaking the world into which they are born.

The Institute hosts an interdisciplinary team of faculty researchers who will teach an innovative new series of team-taught undergraduate and graduate courses. IPLAI also supports graduate and postdoctoral researchers, and funds a summer undergraduate internship program.  Our major lectures by visiting scholars are open to all, as are our various public lecture series. The Institute has also hosted several major conferences and is planning another for Spring 2013.