Division of the Social Sciences
Building on a legacy of impact and innovation, SSD scholars bridge disciplines to understand the forces shaping human behavior, institutions, and public life.
Chicago minds seeking to understand society in all of its dimensions
For a century, the Division of the Social Sciences (SSD) has shaped core social science disciplines while also leading emerging fields, shaping the way we understand and engage with the world. Now more than ever, the transformative power of social science is essential to addressing humanity’s most pressing challenges—from the future of democratic governance to climate change and the opportunities and social challenges of rapid technological advancement. In economics, SSD has occupied a singular place, creating new schools of thought to educate the next generation of leaders.
Philanthropic support will strengthen faculty excellence, expand student opportunity, and sustain our essential culture of open and rigorous discourse to fuel discovery and generate knowledge with global impact.
Priorities
Your giving can support the following areas:
- Endowed professorships and faculty scholar awards to recruit and retain leading social scientists working in areas such as climate and sustainable growth; computational social science; economics; democracy; and race, diaspora, and indigeneity
- Postdoctoral fellowships and faculty research funds to seed high-risk, high-impact scholarship and accelerate cutting-edge research across the social sciences
- The Kenneth C. Griffin Department of Economics to further advance economics scholarship and UChicago’s leadership in the field as well as sharpen our focus on economics pedagogy
- The Chicago Center for Computational Social Science (C3S2) to advance research at the intersection of AI, machine learning, big data, and the social sciences while expanding innovative undergraduate and graduate training programs
- Institutions for prosperity and liberty to establish UChicago as the leading force in identifying and strengthening the institutional structures that enable prosperity and liberty
- Climate, environment, and urbanization initiatives to support interdisciplinary research and pedagogy on topics including energy use; land use migration and urbanization; pricing uncertainty and the social cost of carbon; and the economic and social impact of carbon taxes, abatement technologies, and clean energy subsidies
- Graduate student research, travel, and experiential learning opportunities to help students pursue fieldwork, internships, capstone projects, conferences, and hands-on research experiences around the world
- Curricular innovation and public-facing educational initiatives to expand programs such as Economics for Everyone (E4E), Fellows in Industry, and the Summer Institute in Social Research Methods (SISRM)
- Renewal of historic buildings and next-generation research infrastructure to modernize laboratories, classrooms, collaborative spaces, and facilities such as the Social Sciences Research Building while supporting future growth across the division
Contact
Alice Barda
773.702.4530
abarda@uchicago.edu