PROJECTS

Since its creation in 1919, the IAU has helped to launch, support and fund almost 100 international projects in the humanities and social sciences. The main research projects initiated or sponsored by the UAI are large-scale scholarly surveys, dictionaries, lexicons or scholarly glossaries, catalogues or thesauri, linguistic or historical atlases, and critical editions of complete works or rare texts.

The minutes of the second conference of the UAI, held at the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris on 15-18 October 1919, already contain numerous proposals for research and publications put forward by the participating delegates. Among the first projects adopted were such remarkable undertakings as the Corpus vasorum antiquorum, the Texte alchimiques, the Dictionnaire du latin médiéval, the Tabula Imperii Romani and the Corpus Philosophorum Medii Aevii, all of which produced admirable works and whose exciting research is continuing.

During 1976 it was decided to group UAI-sponsored projects into six thematic sections, entitled respectively : 

1. 1. 1. 1. European languages and literature

         2. Greco-Roman world

         3. Oriental studies

         4. History of civilisations

         5. History of thought

         6. History of art

Since 2004, the assessment of the progress of each ongoing project has required a brief review every two years, followed by a full report every six years, subject to evaluation by independent experts. Nevertheless, the international nature of the UAI's work, as intended by its founders, has proved to be irreplaceable, as has the freedom given to sponsored projects to develop over a very long period.