Program Areas

Work at the SSRC is focused on four program areas, each of which supports working groups, conferences, grants and fellowships, and a wide range of other research activities: 1) Global Security and Cooperation; 2) Knowledge Institutions; 3) Migration; and 4) Renewing the Public. Examples of our work in each of these areas are provided below.

Global Security And Cooperation

The SSRC has a long-standing commitment to developing better understanding of problems of global security and cooperation, from work on arms control and nuclear proliferation, to emerging social, political, and religious movements, global public health challenges, and persistent forms of conflict and threats to human security. More recently, a significant portion of our work in this area clusters around the environment, building on the Council’s decade-long “Global Environmental Change Program” as well as on our staff capacities in East Asia.

Examples of current program activity in this area include:

  • Conflict Prevention and Peace Forum (CPPF), working to strengthen the knowledge base and analytical capacity of the United Nations system by providing UN staff with systematic channels of access to scholars, experts and practitioners outside the intergovernmental system. In 2008, CPPF engaged with some 23 countries and conflict situations in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

  • HIV/AIDS Program, engaging government, non-governmental, and multilateral policy makers, as well as practitioners, in discussions on the global politics of AIDS, while also tackling methodological issues relating to sexual violence and conflict and HIV/AIDS.

  • Gender and Security Program, an offshoot of our work on HIV/AIDS that is helping to advance new research agendas relating to gender, conflict and security, and sexual violence.

  • Project on HIV/AIDS in the Russian Federation, which recently completed its first phase.

  • China Environment and Health Program, promoting the generation and dissemination of new, social science-based research on the relationship between health, environment, and development in China.

  • Ongoing work on provincial health in Vietnam by the Vietnam Program.

  • Inaugural CGP-SSRC Policy Forum, which explored measures for energy saving and reducing air pollution and CO2 emissions for use by local officials, activists, and other actors in mid-sized cities within developing Asian countries.

  • American Human Development Project, which by gathering data on well-being for each of America’s congressional districts turns the lens of human security on the United States.

  • Alex de Waal’s program on Sudan and Darfur as well as his initiatives on How Genocides End, the Epidemiology of Lethal Violence, and the Political Marketplace.

  • Leon Sigal’s Northeast Asia Security Project, which among other activities has been helping to facilitate visits to Pyongyang, North Korea, for Obama administration officials.

Knowledge Institutions

Technological, social, political, and economic conditions are changing the production of knowledge in contemporary societies. Traditional institutions of science and education are being transformed and new ones created. The SSRC works to understand these shifts and their implications. It affirms a commitment to rigorous social science that can inform public and private sectors on topics related to mounting challenges in public higher education, changing models of undergraduate and graduate training, new practices of scientific research, and emerging partnerships in K-12 education.

Examples of current program activity in this area include:

Migration

International migration is at historically high levels. Enormous movements of people are changing the demographic composition of host and sending societies, with profound implications for economic, cultural and political life. The SSRC organizes and sponsors research on migration that focuses both on the experiences of individual nations and localities and on the comparative and collaborative dimensions of immigration across nations and regions.

The SSRC’s Migration Program has led our work in this area since 1994. Its recent work focuses on:

  • Migration and Development, helping researchers and practitioners to better understand how migration and development affect one another.

  • Migration and Religion, bringing together scholars to explore the interrelationship between religion and settlement in new societies.

  • Migration and Education, studying the educational needs of immigrant and second generation students.

  • Diaspora-Government Relations, working to determine how members of diasporas and the U.S. government seek to influence one another in attaining goals having to do with migrants’ homelands.

Renewing The Public

The “public” is distinct from community or even civil society in general. Publics connect people who are not in the same families, communities, and clubs–people who are not the same as each other. As such, they are central to the functioning of modern societies. What are the forms, locations, and conditions of public life? How do publics work, how are they supported by different kinds of physical and virtual communicative spaces, how do they figure in political and cultural life? For several years, the SSRC’s work in this area centers on the parts played by media and religion in fostering a democratic public sphere, on public and private responses to risk and catastrophe, and on public issues in urban development. Moving forward, we are pursuing projects related to President Obama’s efforts to make the government a more effective provider of public services and a more effective partner to private organizations that pursue the public good. See Craig Calhoun’s recent essay, “Remaking America: Public Institutions and the Public Good.”

Examples of current program activity in this area include: