The institute aims both to facilitate academic exchange and to use the German and Central European Jewish experience from the 17th to the 21st centuries to help understand contemporary socio-political debates concerning immigration, minorities, integration, and civil rights, in particular in the UK.

The Leo Baeck Institute was founded in 1955 by some of the most prominent Jewish scholars, including Hannah Arendt, Martin Buber, Ernst Simon and Gershom Sholem.

Published by Oxford University Press and having a circulation of over 2,000 copies, it includes original research on the cultural, economic, political, social and religious history of German-speaking Jews.

The Leo Baeck Institute Year Book Essay Prize is awarded annually to an early-career researcher writing on the history or culture of German-speaking Jewry.

A Leo Baeck Fellowship Programme, in collaboration with the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes, was created in 2005 to support doctoral candidates in German-Jewish studies.