The 8th biennial conference of the National Coalition of Independent Scholars, “Scholars Without Borders,” will be held in Princeton, New Jersey, June 16-18. The Princeton Research Forum, a thriving NCIS affiliate organization, looks forward to co-hosting the conference and welcoming scholars from all over the continent. The conference opens on Friday evening with a banquet at Prospect House (the old president’s mansion) and keynote address by independent scholar Shana Penn, author of Solidarity’s Secret: The Women Who Defeated Communism in Poland, which has received a number of awards, including a 2005 NCIS grant. She will speak about the many borders crossed in researching her book—geographical, linguistic, political and intellectual.

Although the conference is not a Princeton University event, PRF has arranged for all events to take place on the Princeton campus. Accommodations will be in air-conditioned dormitory suites, both comfortable and economical. Everything—conference rooms, banquet hall, Princeton University Art Museum and the historic town of Princeton—will be within walking distance.

There will be panels on practical topics such as surviving and thriving in the electronic environment, and topics of border-crossing scholarly interest: biography, language and translation, art and culture, education, Native American issues, military and oral history, to name a few.

Following the Saturday afternoon panels, conference attendees are invited to a reception and private tour of the Firestone Library by Princeton's University's Special Collections and Rare Books department.

The contact address for further information is conference@princetonresearchforum.org

Halfway between New York and Philadelphia, Princeton served as the nation’s capitol during four fateful months in the summer of 1783. The town has long been an educational, historical and political crossroads, welcoming intellectual border-crossers like Thomas Mann, Albert Einstein, John Nash and Toni Morrison. Princeton’s many educational and research institutions include Princeton University, the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton Theological Seminary, the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, the David Sarnoff Research Center and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.