ISAW is a center for advanced scholarly research and graduate education, intended to cultivate comparative and connective investigations of the ancient world. It will feature doctoral and postdoctoral programs, with the aim of training a new generation of scholars who will enter the global academic community and become intellectual leaders. In an effort to embrace a truly inclusive geographical scope while maintaining continuity and coherence, the Institute will focus on the shared and overlapping periods in the development of cultures and civilizations around the Mediterranean basin, and across central Asia to the Pacific Ocean. The approaches of anthropology, archaeology, geography, geology, history, economics, sociology, art history, and the history of science and technology will be as integral to the enterprise as the study of texts, philosophy, and the analysis of artifacts. The Institute's Director and permanent faculty will determine particular directions of research, but both historical connections and patterns, as well as socially illuminating comparisons, will always be central to its mission.

The creation of the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University in 2006 has its roots in the passion that Shelby White and Leon Levy had for the art and history of the ancient world, which led them to envision an Institute that would offer an unshuttered view of antiquity across vast stretches of time and place. The Institute aims to encourage particularly, the study of the economic, religious, political and cultural connections between ancient civilizations.