The mission of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study is to create an academic community where individuals can pursue advanced work in any of the academic disciplines, professions, or creative arts. Within that broad purpose, it sustains a continuing commitment to the study of women, gender, and society.

The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University fosters transformative works in the arts, humanities, sciences, and social sciences. Each year, approximately 50 women and men arrive in Cambridge to undertake research and creative work as Radcliffe Institute fellows. Scientists, composers, fiction writers, filmmakers, historians, lawyers, literary critics, social scientists, and teachers all convene to interrogate, ponder, and sometimes reinvent, our understanding of the world. The Institute is also home to the unparalleled collections of the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library, the preeminent library for the study of American women.

Embodying the highest values of inquiry, learning, and creativity, the Radcliffe Institute is an integral part of Harvard University. It enriches the University's intellectual life by creating links between its fellows and Harvard schools and departments, and by making its broad range of lectures and conferences, as well as research and learning opportunities, available to Harvard students and faculty. The Radcliffe Institute serves as an intellectual convening force across Harvard's schools and as a site for interdisciplinary collaboration.

The Radcliffe Institute sustains a special commitment to the study of women, gender, and society, and its research and programming include a substantial gender component. Recent fellows have explored issues related to women in law, music, the economy, medicine and health, religion, literature, and history, in settings from early modern Italy and 19th century Iran to contemporary China, India, and the United States. The Institute holds a major conference on women each year, initiating discussion of topics such as the relationship of women to money and power, the place of African American women in United States history, and reproductive health.