The Social Science Research Council (SSRC) will work to consider how to strengthen the intellectual and organizational infrastructure needed to improve understandings of the social impacts of global processes through international collaborative research. The research focus of this work will be on social inequality and social inclusion/exclusion -- topics of great importance within and between nations. To undertake this, a series of meetings will be organized with social scientists and representatives of national funding agencies. Background work on international collaboration, global processes, and training needs for international collaboration will frame the discussions. The Economic and Social Research Council (U.K.) will partner in these efforts and contribute funds for extending the work beyond 12 months.
The series of four meetings and the report that will come out will serve as a useful guide outlining promising directions for fostering international collaborations on these and related topics and will suggest mechanisms for doing so. The collaborations that have been arranged include links among North America, Europe, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East and North Africa, Eurasia, South and South East Asia; and East Asia. The perspective of scholars will be sought to determine what research competencies are needed, across many disciplines, to address these issues and what are the relevant concepts, models, theories, and methods. Scholars will also be asked to think about the nature of the training and scholarly relationships that will facilitate addressing these questions in the context of international collaboration. The national funding agencies will be asked to indicate what science they already support and what funding mechanisms they use to do so; they will also think about future partnerships and collaborations.
The broader impacts of this work include the inclusion of voices and perspectives representative of the full geographic, social, and disciplinary diversity of the international community of the social sciences. This will support growing scientific international cooperation. The linking of NSF research agendas in the social, behavioral, and economic sciences with those of other national funding agencies will be a particularly beneficial outcome of this work. In addition, a scholarly and administrative awareness will be engendered of the importance of the issues of inequality and social exclusion/inclusion, as global issues will be a very valuable broader impact. These are issues that clearly transcend national boundaries. This work responds to current international interest in these issues and stems partly from growing international tensions related to terrorism, as well as international isolation due to new travel restrictions and nationalism.
