Institute for Advanced Studies

The Institute for Advanced Studies (IHS) is a non-profit organisation founded in 1963 by two prominent Austrians living in exile, the sociologist Paul F. Lazarsfeld and the economist Oskar Morgenstern, with the financial help of the Ford Foundation, the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, and the City of Vienna.

The IHS is now Austria’s premier postgraduate research and training institute that combines theoretical and empirical research in economics and social sciences through the interaction between theory and practice, it provides innovative value-added services to policy makers and business practitioners. The institute’s key features are interdisciplinary exchange, a truly international faculty, a commitment to quality and original scholarly output. In cooperation with the leading universities Austrian universities (the University of Vienna and the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration), it offers MA and Ph.D. courses in Sociology, Economics and Finance. The institute counts approximately 70 scientific and 20 administrative employees. About 50 students are presently participating in the postgraduate course programs. There are Departments of Sociology,Economics and Finance, Political Sciences as well as an IT department and an excellent library (approximately 20,300 volumes with an access to major international bibliographic databases).

At present one-third of the Institute’s budget is accounted for by commissioned research. The remaining funding is provided by subsidies from the Federal Ministry of Education and Science, the Austrian National Bank, the City of Vienna, and other institutions.

The IHS-Vienna team is led by Dr. Alexander Chvorostov (Deputy Director of the IHS Center for Strategic Development) who shall coordinate and administer the whole project on behalf of the Coordinating institution (IHS-Vienna).

Dr. Alexander Chvorostov is an experienced sociologist and research manager with an extensive international teaching, research and consulting practice since early 1990s. He has been teaching various undergraduate and post-graduate courses in Sociology in a number of universities in Moscow, Prague and Vienna. Research practice embraces the fields of social transition, educational and social policies, comparative studies of EU and accession countries as well as CIS countries. Consulting experiences include services for the international organisations World Bank, UNDP and UNEP, DFID and DRC (UK), TACIS projects, Regional Environmental Center (Budapest), as well as various governmental institutions in Russia (Federal Ministries of Nature Protection, Education, Social Security) and in Austria (Federal Ministry for Social Security, Generations and Consumer Protection, Government of Burgenland). Dr. Chvorostov has worked as an academic consultant to the George Soros Foundation (OSI-Open Society Institute), World Bank projects, as well as coordinated a series of FP5, FP6 and INTAS projects.

The IHS research team is supported by project assistant Bianca Brandl.