Access to rigorous study should not be gatekept by geography or gender
At a moment when traditional academic institutions are contracting under market pressures and intellectual timidity, the New Centre is deliberately expanding its reach — structurally, technologically, and geographically. Beginning July 17, the institution opens scholarship applications for its 2026–27 certificate programs, embedding equity into its architecture through automatic tuition reductions for Global South applicants and gender parity among full scholarship recipients. The launch of a new AI-integrated platform signals not merely a technical refresh but a philosophical wager: that rigorous thought in philosophy, art, and social theory can be decentralized, made polyphonic, and freed from the gatekeeping of credential and geography.
- Traditional academia is being hollowed out by stagnation and market demands for quantifiable outcomes, and the New Centre is positioning itself as a living counterweight to that erosion.
- A narrow application window — July 17 to August 25 — compresses the urgency, requiring applicants to articulate both their intellectual preoccupations and their financial realities in a single submission.
- The scholarship structure is policy, not gesture: Global South applicants receive an automatic 50% tuition reduction, and the institution has committed to ensuring half of all full scholarships go to Global South students and half to women.
- A newly launched AI-integrated platform replaces the institution's previous website, embodying its stated ambition to become more decentralized and polyphonic in how knowledge circulates.
- An expanded programming committee, a new Dean of Academic Affairs, and a sweeping curriculum spanning Deleuze, Malabou, Lukács, Brazilian music, and informational warfare signal an institution scaling its intellectual ambitions to match its equity commitments.
- Recent activity at the Venice Biennale, the Mayrit Biennial, and through its publishing arm &&& positions the New Centre not as a peripheral experiment but as an active participant in contemporary cultural and theoretical discourse.
The New Centre is opening scholarship applications for its fall/winter 2026–27 certificate programs starting July 17, with the window closing August 25. Applicants submit a writing sample and a cover letter addressing both their intellectual interests and financial circumstances.
The scholarship architecture is built around a clear equity logic. Global South applicants automatically receive a fifty percent tuition reduction. Beyond that, the institution has committed to awarding half of its full scholarships to Global South students and half to women — a structural policy rather than an aspiration.
The announcement coincides with the launch of a redesigned platform that integrates artificial intelligence as a tool for decentralizing learning. The New Centre frames this move against a backdrop of institutional crisis: conventional academia, it argues, is being eroded by intellectual stagnation and the pressure to produce measurable, market-legible outcomes. The new platform is a deliberate alternative architecture.
The programming committee has grown to match the institution's expanding scope. Roya Rastegar joins as Transdisciplinary Studies Programmer; Sarah Amselem Felices and Morgane Billuart co-program Information Architecture and Intelligence Design; Reza Negarestani takes on the role of Dean of Academic Affairs; J.P. Caron and Anna Longo share Critical Philosophy programming; and Khares Tokatlidis joins as Alumni Affairs Coordinator.
The seminar offerings this season are wide-ranging and philosophically serious — courses address the concept of life across biology and psychoanalysis, Catherine Malabou's plasticity, Deleuze and fascist desire, the October journal at fifty years, informational warfare and subjectivity, and new rationalisms in the age of AI, among many others. Workshops extend into internet cinema, category theory, Japanese media archaeology, heavy metal, and Berlin's spatial form.
The institution has also been active beyond its own walls. It held the fifth edition of Hyperannotations at the Venice Biennale, and Mohammad Salemy and Eduarda Neves co-curated the central exhibition at the Mayrit Biennial 2026. Its publishing arm, &&&, has released new titles including a second edition of Logiciel and Art World 3000, with a bundle of all &&& Books now available at a reduced price.
The New Centre is opening its doors wider this fall. Starting July 17, the institution is accepting scholarship applications for its certificate programs running through winter 2026–27, with a deliberate architecture designed to shift who gets access to serious intellectual work. The application window closes August 25 at 11:59pm Eastern time. Applicants need to submit a writing sample and a cover letter that speaks to their intellectual preoccupations and their financial circumstances.
The scholarship structure itself signals intent. Anyone applying from the Global South receives an automatic fifty percent reduction on tuition. Beyond that, the institution has committed to ensuring that half of its full scholarship recipients come from the Global South and half are women. It's a concrete policy, not rhetoric—a way of saying that access to rigorous study in philosophy, art, technology, and social thought should not be gatekept by geography or gender.
This expansion arrives alongside a significant institutional shift. The New Centre has built a new platform, now live, that replaces its previous website. The move marks something larger than a technical upgrade: the institution is explicitly embracing artificial intelligence as a tool to become what it calls more decentralized and polyphonic. The timing is deliberate. Official academia, the institution argues, is being hollowed out from within by intellectual stagnation and pressured from outside by market demands for measurable, quantifiable outcomes. The New Centre is positioning itself as a counterweight to that erosion.
The programming structure has expanded to match the ambition. A larger committee now shapes the curriculum. Roya Rastegar joins as Transdisciplinary Studies Programmer, bringing experience as a writer, scholar, filmmaker, and cultural strategist. Sarah Amselem Felices, a designer and digital strategist, works alongside Morgane Billuart as co-programmers for Information Architecture and Intelligence Design. Reza Negarestani, who teaches at the institution, now also serves as Dean of Academic Affairs. J.P. Caron and Anna Longo share responsibility as Critical Philosophy co-programmers. Khares Tokatlidis has been brought on as Alumni Affairs Coordinator, a role meant to deepen the institution's relationship with its former and current students.
The seminars being offered this season span philosophy, art, curating, and criticism with considerable intellectual range. Anna Beria examines how the concept of life moves across philosophy, biology, and psychoanalysis. Morgane Billuart traces the disembodied female body from flesh to digital interface. Conrad Hamilton revisits Catherine Malabou's thinking on plasticity. J.P. Caron and Rafael Pedroso take up social synthesis in the work of Sohn-Rethel. Alex Taek-Gwang Lee reads Deleuze alongside Marx and the question of fascist desire. Marcello Musto traces genealogies of critiques of capitalism. Daniel Tutt surveys the later work of Georg Lukács on social ontology. Domenic Hutchins and Sean Tatol examine the October journal fifty years after its founding. Boris Ondreička develops intercentric curatorial studies. Anna Longo addresses informational warfare and its effects on subjectivity. Vincent Lê explores new rationalisms in the age of artificial intelligence. Nathaniel Wooding considers the relationship between philosophy and strategy. Romulo Moraes turns to Brazilian music collectionism. Roya Rastegar investigates the legacy of Marjane Satrapi.
Workshops and roundtables extend the range further. Mischa Dols and Onty examine internet cinema and modernism's crisis. Rafael de Toledo Pedroso maps the ghostweb and digital residue. Simon Schirren works with sheaves and category theory as information architecture. Fernando Wirtz treats nostalgia as method in Japanese media archaeology. David Burke explores heavy metal as overdriven culture. Aleksandr Delev investigates online domesticity and the vernacular home. Jeffrey Grunthaner considers intelligibility and technics beyond modern instrumentality. Joshua Guiness examines Berlin and spatial form after the polis. eileen slightly works with illustration as evasive method and the grotesque corpse. Ankur Yadav builds narratives from the ground.
This spring, the institution held the fifth edition of Hyperannotations, its public program at the Venice Biennale of Art. The team behind it—Ilya Lobanov, Khares Tokatlidis, Ecem Arslanay, and Leila Kaarina Barber—conducted interviews now available on the institution's YouTube channel. Mohammad Salemy and board member Eduarda Neves co-curated the central exhibition at the Mayrit Biennial 2026, titled (Super)Models, an inquiry into models as generative agents. The institution's publishing arm, &&&, released a second edition of Logiciel: Six Seminars on Computational Reason by AA Cavia, with a foreword by Anna Longo, and Art World 3000, edited by Mohammad Salemy and instructor Romulo Moraes. That latter book emerged from a seminar on contemporary art and the post-pandemic condition, with contributions from nine artists and thinkers. The New Centre is now offering a bundle of all &&& Books titles at a reduced price.
Citas Notables
Official academia is being eroded from within by stagnation and from outside by the market's demand for quantifiable results— The New Centre
La Conversación del Hearth Otra perspectiva de la historia
Why does the New Centre need a new platform right now, and why does it matter that it uses AI?
Because traditional academia is being squeezed from two directions at once—it's becoming intellectually stagnant from within, and it's being forced to optimize for measurable outcomes by market pressure from outside. A decentralized platform using AI is a way of saying: we're not going to replicate the hierarchies and gatekeeping of the institution we're trying to be an alternative to.
The scholarship structure is interesting. Why automatic fifty percent off for Global South applicants specifically?
Because access to serious intellectual work has been geographically unequal for centuries. You can't build a genuinely polyphonic institution—one with many voices—if you only admit people who can already afford it. The automatic reduction removes the burden of having to prove need or justify your place.
Half the full scholarships go to women, half to Global South applicants. What if someone is both?
That's the real question, isn't it. The policy as stated creates two categories, but the lived experience of someone from the Global South who is also a woman is singular. The institution is trying to be intentional about who gets in, but like any policy, it's imperfect.
The curriculum looks enormous—philosophy, art, technology, social thought, everything from Deleuze to heavy metal. How does that cohere?
It doesn't cohere in the traditional sense. It's deliberately polyphonic. The idea is that rigorous thinking can happen across domains, and that students should be exposed to multiple frameworks and conversations happening simultaneously, not in a predetermined sequence.
What's the significance of the publishing arm releasing Art World 3000?
It's a way of saying that the institution's intellectual work doesn't stay contained in seminars. It becomes public, it gets published, it circulates. And the book itself—written as speculative histories and artworks set in the future—suggests that thinking about art and culture now means imagining what comes next.