Overview

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Social Science Research Council?

The Social Science Research Council (SSRC) is an independent nonprofit organization devoted to the advancement of social science research and scholarship. Founded in New York City in 1923 as the world's first national coordinating body of the social sciences, it is today an international resource for interdisciplinary, innovative public social science.

What is the Council's mission?

The Council has a mission to lead innovation in the social sciences, build interdisciplinary and international networks, mobilize knowledge on important public issues, and educate and train the next generation of social science researchers. Read our full mission statement.

How does the Council accomplish its work?

The SSRC pursues its mission by awarding fellowships and grants, convening workshops and conferences, participating in research consortia, sponsoring scholarly exchanges, organizing summer training institutes, and producing print and online publications.

What are some of the issues the Council works on?

Under the leadership of Craig Calhoun (1999-present), the SSRC has focused on global security and cooperation, knowledge institutions, migration, and renewing the public as its four thematic areas, with close to twenty major programs within these areas. Topics include American human development, digital media and learning, international migration, media reform, the privatization of risk, religion and international affairs, and the challenges posed by HIV/AIDS in Russia, Africa and around the world. We also offer several prestigious fellowships for researchers doing promising work in the social sciences and related disciplines. Our largest fellowship program, the International Dissertation Research Fellowships (IDRF), funds graduate students for research in all parts of the globe.

Why is the Council's work important?

The SSRC is guided by the belief that justice, prosperity, and democracy all require better understanding of complex social, cultural, economic, and political processes. We are committed to the idea that social science can produce necessary knowledge—necessary for citizens to understand their societies and necessary for policy makers to decide on crucial questions.

Whom does the Council work with?

The Council works with academic researchers in the social sciences, as well as in the humanities and natural sciences, and with practitioners and policymakers in areas and professions that intersect with the issues we work on.

Does the Council cover all of the social sciences?

The Council is defined not by its work on any one topic, nor by any one specific disciplinary combination, nor has it ever represented all of social science. Rather, our distinctive niche is to innovate and incubate, to identify emergent lines of research that will be enhanced by interdisciplinary ties, and to help scattered researchers achieve critical mass in the creation of a self-sustaining new field.

What are some of the Council's most significant accomplishments?

The Council has provided over 10,000 fellowships to graduate students and young researchers around the world since our inception in 1923. Our networks and committees have pioneered new approaches to understanding society and processes of social, cultural, economic, and political change, and have profoundly influenced many fields of social inquiry, from pioneering work on business cycles in the 1920s to the emergence of security studies in the 1980s and 1990s. Read more about our history.

Among the fields of research Council-led initiatives have helped to create are comparative politics, area studies, global security, and human development and the life course. We have played a central role in developing quantitative methods of social science research such as economic indicators and scientific sampling.

The SSRC's interdisciplinary collaborations have occasionally given birth to new disciplines. In the 1960s, for example, we brought together specialists in linguistics, sociology, and anthropology to study the interactions of languages and societies, which led to the emergence of sociolinguistics. More recently, the SSRC has played a critical role in establishing the field of migration studies.

How much of the Council's work is international in focus?

At its founding, the SSRC was mostly American in its organization and outlook. But our work eventually expanded to include international concerns. From the 1960s onwards, we became known for our work encouraging the study of other regions of the world and for our commitment to fostering the development of the social sciences in those regions by offering fellowships and other programs for foreign researchers. Today we are a leading force in international social science, and around 20 percent of our funding comes from overseas. Work requiring "context specific" or "place-based" knowledge typically represents around 60 percent of program activity in any given year. Additionally, the Council has in-house expertise on Africa, Cuba, China, Japan, the Middle East, North Korea, and Vietnam. Likewise, our Board of Directors includes experts on Africa (Michael J. Watts); the former Soviet Union countries (Michael D. Kennedy); Mexico (Claudio Lomnitz); the Middle East (Lisa Anderson, Gilles Kepel); and Siberia and Mongolia (Caroline Humphrey).

Where does the Council operate?

The SSRC maintains a headquarters in Brooklyn Heights and a satellite office in Tokyo. We also have representation in China, South Asia, and Southeast Asia and can call on networks of researchers throughout Africa, Europe, and Latin America.

How is the Council structured?

The SSRC is governed by a Board of Directors made up of social scientists and practitioners from a broad range of disciplines and institutions. The Board elects the SSRC's president and regularly reviews its intellectual program. An executive committee of the Board oversees financial and operational aspects. The SSRC's work is directed by the president and a staff of approximately eighty.

How is the Council's work financed?

The SSRC's work is made possible by grants from more than a dozen private and public institutions, including the Ford Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership, as well as some foreign governments. Agencies of the U.S. government have also provided support, especially the National Science Foundation, the United States Information Agency, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Funding is not accepted from any source that would compromise the independence of the Council's scholars or its international stature as an open forum of exchange.

The Council also invites gifts and donations from individuals. We are currently seeking to raise endowment funds to bolster support for its most innovative and urgent work. Donate to our endowment campaign.