Center for Government and International Studies (CGIS)

About CGIS

Photo of CGIS buildingThe Center for Government and International Studies unites the Government Department, faculty of the History Department who have international research interests, and many of the international research centers in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard. The complex is designed to promote lively, interdisciplinary exchange among faculty, students, and visitors from around the world.


H. C. Fung Library

Photo of Fung LibraryThe H. C. Fung Library was founded in 2005 on the model of the informal cooperative relationship established in 1976 between the Center for International Affairs Library and the area studies libraries located in Coolidge Hall, which was located at the site of the new Knafel Building at 1737 Cambridge Street. Like other subject-oriented libraries in Harvard Library, the Fung Library and its constituents—the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies Library, the Documentation Center on Contemporary Japan, and the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research Library—collect resources in specific areas (primarily social sciences) in multiple languages and from many geographical regions. Materials are selected by librarians with expertise in a designated area of the world and who are affiliated with a particular research institute at Harvard University. The Fung Library works closely with Numeric Data Services, another division of HCL’s Social Sciences Program, and the adjacent Harvard–MIT Data Center in order to provide services and collections to data users throughout the University. The Fung Library collection also includes journals and newspapers in the fields of international politics, foreign relations, foreign policy, economics, and political science. Both the area studies collections and the general collection support the research and teaching programs of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at the graduate and undergraduate levels.