One means of fixing and making ideas tangible, often scorned and neglected in the social sciences, but widely used in STEM, are spinouts. For universities, a spinout is a company formed on the basis of intellectual property from a university or research institute.

In early February, the proposed U.S. government budget for the 2021 fiscal year featured sizable funding cuts to many federally […]

As the world emerges from the COVID-19 lockdown many opportunities have arisen to rethink how and for whom our societies operate. In this post, Julia Black argues that social sciences can play a unique role in the post-COVID-19 recovery by forging new relationships with business and commerce and outlines how initiatives, such as the Aspect network, are seeking to bridge the divide between the social sciences and business.

Academic freedom is only one wing by which the academy flies, says Jimi Adesina. The other is the duty of scholars to act ethically and responsibly.

Edited collections, are one of the most disparaged forms of academic writing, often written off as low quality, or a poor career choice. In contrast, Peter Webster argues for the unique benefit of edited collections, as a creative form of collective academic endeavor that does not sit easily within an academy that is averse to creative risk.

In the wake of COVID-19, researchers can become trusted figures of authority who can purposely use their institutional privilege and re-appropriate their research networks, skills and knowledge to better the lives of vulnerable populations during a pandemic.

Political scientist and anthropologist James C. Scott, co-director of the Agrarian Studies Program at Yale University and a self-described “mediocre farmer,” has received the 2020 Albert O. Hirschman Prize from the Social Science Research Council.

One of the proposed advantages of open access publication is that it increases the impact of academic research by making it more broadly and easily accessible. Reporting on a natural experiment on the citation impact of health research that is published in both open access and subscription journals, Chris Carroll and Andy Tattersall, suggests that subscription journals still play an important role in making research discoverable and useful and thus still have a role to play even in open publication strategies.

David Canter considers the emerging social science perspectives for controlling COVID-19

In light of the global coronavirus pandemic, anthropologists around the world have been preparing to utilize knowledge gained from past […]

Around the world, face-to-face teaching has ceased, campuses are closed and empty, a sudden shift to pervasive online has generated little enthusiasm among students, travel restrictions have drained the lucrative flow of international students to a trickle, and many universities have reported significant financial problems. So what do I do with my freshly minted PhD?

For over a decade Kenya has made moves towards e-learning for university students. This is all the more important now, as universities have closed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But questions remain as to how effective it is. Jackline Nyerere shares her insights.