Our mission
The Faculty of Social Sciences (FSW) aims for maintaining an internationally high level of research and impact of disciplinary, multidisciplinary, and transdisciplinary social sciences for and with society. FSW, in collaboration with societal stakeholders, addresses and contributes to solving complex societal problems in order to improve live of people. To improve policies, make society more resilient, smarter, more democratic, healthier, more engaged: that’s what FSW wants to achieve.
Social Sciences for and with Society
The Faculty of Social Sciences aims to play a leading role nationally in societal impact and innovation. The mission-oriented Research & Impact Labs play a key role in this ambition. By co-producing socially relevant, critical, and valued knowledge products and interventions we contribute to explain, reflect, signal, inform and educate about developments and complex challenges our society faces.
Societal Impact
With the social impact of our social scientific expertise, we contribute to finding solutions to complex social issues from an engaged, critical stance with an eye for deployment and development of personal talents and skills of our researchers and collaborative partners. In an open dialogue with societal partners and peer researchers, we share our social scientific knowledge while retrieving new insights from professionals and practices to enrich our research and teaching.
With the R&I labs as drivers of our mission-oriented research and societal impact, we focus our impact activities on policy, social innovation, and media for maximum societal impact. We engage with policymakers to inform decision-making and conduct research to support evidence-based policymaking. We co-create social innovative solutions with community stakeholders and grassroots initiatives to achieve social innovations. We use various media channels to share research insights, put issues on the agenda and amplify our societal impact.
Research & Impact labs
The Research & Impact labs are the creative and innovative engine of our research and impact activities for large, complex societal challenges in fields where we have proven excellence and have shown ambitions for the future. These wicked problems require a mission-oriented approach where the combined understandings of different disciplines, methodological innovation, and cooperation with societal stakeholders are key.
The portfolio of R&I labs comprises seven mission-oriented labs designed to realise societal impact and to address some of the most pressing challenges facing society today. These R&I labs are Artificial Intelligence & Digital Governance lab (AIDG lab), Co-Creation for Inclusive Knowledges Production lab, Resilience, Security & Civil Unrest lab (ReSCU lab), Ethnographic Impact lab (eLab), Wellbeing @ Work lab, Digital Media & Behavior lab (DM&B lab) and Societal Analytics lab.