Campaign for Social Science - Progress Report

Professor Tony Crook from the Academy of Social Sciences (AcSS) has provided the following update on the progress of the recently launched Campaign for Social Science.

The Campaign (CfSS) is sponsored by the Academy of Social Sciences.  The Academy is the senior learned society of the social sciences (the equivalent of the Royal Society for natural science). Membership includes 700 elected Academicians and 41 learned societies, which between them have 85,000 members working in the social sciences.  The RTPI is one of the societies and several of its members are Academicians.

The Academy’s aims are to promote the social sciences for the public benefit and it launched CfSS because of the threats to social science in universities and the policy and practice communities.   Our aims are to promote the visibility of social science and their strategic contribution to society to government, the media and general public with the additional intention of securing better funding.

The Campaign Board consists of four Council members (including myself, in the chair and Robert Upton), and five co-opted members, including Kate Barker, whose work on the Monetary Policy Committee and her reports on housing and planning will be well known to RTPI members, and Professor Paul Wiles the Government’s former Chief Social Scientist. David Walker, well known journalist and commentator, is campaign adviser.  We have launched a fund raising appeal to secure the £300k staff and other costs of running CfSS for the next five years.

CFSS was launched in the House of Lords in January and included speeches by major figures in the social sciences and by David Willetts, the government’s universities and science Minister.  This is being followed by eleven road-shows in the regions and nations.

Our campaign plan focuses activity in five key areas: (i) keeping in touch with our supporters and donors; (ii) monitoring the ‘cuts’ in universities and in the policy and practice communities; (iii) partnership working (including member Learned Societies, the British Academy, and the Deans of Arts, Social Science & Humanities in the UK; (iv) media activity (both responding to news and other items in the media and pro actively placing stories); and (v) influencing work, including meetings with key influencers and decision makers, for example the Commons Committee on Science and Technology, the All Party Parliamentary Group on Social Science, and the ESRC.

It is only 6 weeks since our launch but already the Campaign is making itself known and felt. But to keep this up we need funds. I can report good progress with pledged donations already reaching £38k. 

I will keep the network regularly posted on progress. Check out the CfSS website for more information and follow us on Twitter at CfSocialScience.

More information on the Academy of Social Sciences

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