Summer Program in Social Science
The School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, has organized the Summer Program in Social Science (SPSS), which began as a 3-year pilot program in 2015 with grants from Riksbankens Jubileumsfond and the Wolfensohn Family Foundation. Click here to see an overview of the collective project initiated during the inaugural Summer Program in Social Science.
Currently funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, this innovative program takes place over a two-year cycle, beginning with a two-week session held in English in Princeton followed by one week at a collaborating institution, with continuous communication facilitated among the scholars throughout the two-year period. The program is led by Didier Fassin, Professor in the Institute’s School of Social Science and at the Collège de France.
Designed to draw together twenty early-career scholars from countries in Africa, the Middle East and Latin America, the program aims to enrich and expand the realm of the social sciences through the confrontation of different intellectual traditions and perspectives; to facilitate and enhance the dialogue between various scientific disciplines and communities; and to strengthen international networks across continents. The program is open to scholars from all social sciences, including anthropology, sociology, history, psychology, economics, law, and political science, as well as neighboring disciplines such as philosophy, political theory, and literary studies.
Fellows pursue and present their own research projects during the program. This research is expected to be at an advanced stage of development so as to render discussions of its object, method and conclusions richer and intellectual interactions among the fellows more fruitful. Special attention is paid to local contexts of production and global modalities of circulation of knowledge, and the participants are invited to exchange their research experiences. The purpose is to constitute a genuinely international and interdisciplinary network of social scientists from the global South.