A Testimonial of Transformation: Being a Fellow at IIAS

Looking back at my months at IIAS, what stays with me most is how the fellowship reshaped my relationship with research. Before coming to Leiden, my academic work often felt framed in the language of necessity: I need to finish this project; I must deliver that output. At IIAS, something shifted. The sense of obligation gave way to a sense of possibility. I found myself thinking less in terms of what I had to do and more in terms of what I wanted to explore. That change may sound subtle, but for me it was transformative. I believe this transformation stems from three qualities that make IIAS unique.

First, the attentiveness to fellows’ voices. Whether one is a senior scholar with decades of experience or an early-career researcher just out of the PhD, IIAS offers the same seriousness of attention. Ideas, however tentative or unconventional, are listened to and supported. The institute not only provides an open ear but also mobilizes its resources, networks, events, and collaborations to help these ideas take shape. This environment of respect and responsiveness made me feel that my intellectual imagination mattered, and that I was not simply being “hosted” but actively accompanied on my research journey.

Second, the way IIAS cultivates community. Fellows come from diverse regions and disciplines, and it would be easy for each to stay in their own lane. Instead, IIAS has created an architecture of everyday life, including shared workspaces, lunches, excursions, and conversations, that gently but steadily draws people together. Over time, these encounters produced a community that was not only academically stimulating but also personally supportive. For me, this network of peers became a source of encouragement in research, companionship in daily life, and solidarity during the inevitable ups and downs of a fellowship abroad.

Third, the institute’s openness to experimentation. What I encountered at IIAS was not innovation in the narrow sense (the sort of theoretical novelty that every article is expected to claim) but innovation in the broader sense of expanding the boundaries of knowledge itself. Here, scholars are encouraged to experiment with new research methods, new forms of dissemination, and new platforms of dialogue. The institute feels less like a traditional academic workplace and more like a large-scale laboratory for the humanities and social sciences. Within this experimental space, it felt natural for my own questions to change: from What do I need to complete? to What do I want to try?

This shift may be the deepest gift of the fellowship. IIAS provided the time, the community, and the institutional imagination that allowed me to approach my research with curiosity and freedom rather than anxiety and compulsion. That atmosphere has been rare in my academic trajectory so far, and it reminded me why I turned to scholarship in the first place: not only to deliver results, but to ask questions, to create, and to explore.

For me, IIAS was not simply a host institution but a catalyst. It was a place where research became more than a profession; it became a practice of possibility.

Ming Luo is an Assistant Professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University. She earned her PhD in Sociology from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her research focuses on gender and sexuality, urban–rural migration, and bullying and violence.