The International Symposium on Audit Research (ISAR) was formed in 1995 from a merger of two previous audit research symposia: the USC Audit Judgment Symposium and the Maastricht Audit Research Symposium. It is now co-sponsored by a consortium of four universities: Maastricht University (Netherlands), Nanyang Technological University (Singapore), University of Massachusetts (USA) and UNSW Sydney (Australia).
ISAR has been held annually since 1995 and is typically hosted by one of the five universities in the consortium. However, other universities have also been invited to host the Symposium in certain years, including Shanghai Jiaotong University (2007), Université Laval (2011), Waseda University (2012) and Northeastern University (2015).