October 2026

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the webpage of the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study.  I invite you to browse the site for an overview of the center and an introduction to its activities. 

In my first Director’s Letter last fall I described the pressing need today for the university to engage more deliberately and forcefully with the public and to make the case for the value of academic research to society.  The urgency of this task has only become more evident over the past year, and it will undoubtedly remain on the agenda for the foreseeable future.  Many universities and colleges across the country have recognized the importance of this challenge.  This emphasis on the university’s mission to serve the public interest is part of Brown’s DNA.  It is at the core of Brown’s charter adopted more that 250 years ago to prepare students “for discharging the offices of life with usefulness and reputation.”  And it was the central purpose of the generous gift of the Brown family that established the endowment of the JNBC and provided the center with use of the elegant Nightingale-Brown House that had been the family residence for nearly two centuries.

As we enter the 2026-2027 academic year the JNBC finds itself at a milestone.  We have completed a major six-month renovation of the Nightingale-Brown House that included a comprehensive upgrade of all the mechanical systems in the building as well as installing a state-of-the-art fire and smoke alarm system, introducing numerous accessibility measures, and undertaking various other improvements in the site.  Ronald Potvin, the Nightingale-Brown House Curator, has also taken advantage of the time during which this construction was underway to complete his compilation of a comprehensive searchable database of digital photos and captions of the Nightingale-Brown House collection of material artifacts (this comprises about 1,500 items including portraits, furniture, and decorations donated by members of the Brown family, along with a digital archive of family photographs).  Finally, this year marks the last year of the JNBC’s very active and fruitful collaboration with the John Carter Brown Library on the Brown 2026 Presidential Initiative, including the appointment of seven JNBC-Brown 2026 Visiting Senior Faculty Fellows to conduct research connected to the legacy of the American Revolution on the occasion of its 250^th anniversary. 

With these significant projects of the new JNBC coming to a close we are now very pleased to be embarking on a major three-year initiative under the heading of Democratizing Knowledge focusing squarely on our goal of supporting faculty proposals that have the specific purpose of communicating cutting-edge academic research to the broader public.  To achieve this, we will collaborate with a number of scholars, centers and institutes at Brown, taking advantage of existing initiatives and creating some new ones.  We will also host and support up to six Faculty Fellows, including visitors and Brown faculty, who will be in residence at the JNBC for one year beginning fall 2027.  For more details, please visit JNBC “Collaborations and Initiatives.”

I invite you to please sign up for the JNBC mailing list to receive emails about upcoming events and other happenings at the center. 

Sincerely,

Kevin McLaughlin
Director, John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study
George Hazard Crooker Professor of English, Comparative Literature, and German Studies
Dean Emeritus of the Faculty