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Author: Rebecca Longtin

Editor, Social Sciences

Since its inception in 2015, the blog has grown into a dynamic platform for interdisciplinary dialogue, global collaboration, and public engagement – amplifying the voices of scholars tackling the world’s most urgent challenges. 

In celebration of the tenth anniversary of the blog, ten authors reflect on why social science research matters more than ever in light of current issues society faces.

Imagining a Better Future

Social science matters because it helps us make sense of the complex, interdependent, and uncertain world we live in, and because it offers resources for imagining and enacting better futures. Social science research illuminates the social conditions that make such creativity possible: how agency is exercised, how traditions are transformed, how people engage with one another and their environments to create change. Without these insights, we risk reproducing myths that disempower people and ignore their potential to shape society. 

By rethinking creativity socioculturally, we gain a deeper appreciation of everyday human agency and a clearer vision of how collective imagination and action can address the pressing challenges of our time.
 
Vlad Gl?veanu, Professor of Psychology and Director of the DCU Centre for Possibility Studies, Dublin City University, Ireland

Exploring the ‘Why’ Behind Statistics

As a college student, I loved statistics. I liked the way hard numbers told a story. I could use statistics to inform people about the ways that societal ills plagued various communities. Right now, statistics are being used to deny opportunities to people who desperately want them. Political commentators cite statistics as weapons to identify people who should not be allowed to pursue the American Dream.

Hard data is not enough to help us understand the ways in which human communities unfold. Humans are complex and societies are layered with human error and achievement. The American story reflects complications and setbacks that can be explained through the study of social behavior.  Social science teaches us to explore the “why” behind the statistic. It explains the ways that societies work and do not work. Social science contributes to a thriving society.

Hope C. Rias, Bridgewater College, VA, USA

Opposing the Erosion of Democracy

In an increasing number of countries, we observe the political phenomenon known as backsliding, whereby the bases of democratic polity are being eroded through the actions of democratically-elected far-right politicians. 

Social sciences disciplines have been a kind of collateral damage in this far-rightward drift, as a growing number of universities around the world eliminate social sciences degree programmes and even entire departments and faculties. Meanwhile, far-right politicians have shown a propensity to pursue and attack social scientists, not least by denigrating their work and/or by cutting funding for their research.  

In such a climate, we need the social sciences more than ever because without them, we descend onto a dystopian world with no oppositional force to contest the forward thrust of far-right ideology and political action.

David Block, Honorary Professor of Sociolinguistics, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain

Seeing Past the Headlines

Social science research matters profoundly for understanding immigration policy because it helps us see past headlines and grasp how narratives are constructed.

The current controversy over “asylum seekers in hotels” illustrates the point. At first glance it appears to be about numbers and costs. But research shows the real driver is media amplification: a handful of cues (crisis, cost, control) reverberate between digital platforms, print, and broadcast outlets, hardening into the “common sense” of the moment. This dynamic burdens vulnerable people with responsibility for systemic policy failure. Social science provides evidence for rebalancing attention: amplifying first person voices, investing in better decision making, and creating safe and legal routes. With it, we gain the tools to design policies that are just, sustainable, and informed by context rather than spectacle.

Nasar Meer, Professor of Social and Political Science, University of Glasgow, UK

Dismantling Inequalities

In 2019, I wrote about an “activism of inclusion”, arguing that universities must dismantle systemic inequities. Six years on, the urgency of that claim has only intensified. In higher education, women represent the majority of staff but only 20% of full professors in the UK. Recent research demonstrates that even in institutions with gender equity awards, women experience silencing, disproportionate “academic housework” and inconsistent policy implementation, while gender‐washing creates the illusion of equality and fuels backlash from colleagues who perceive themselves as disadvantaged.     

Social science research matters now more than ever because it unmasks these contradictions, documents the lived effects of gendered regimes, and offers pathways for collective disruption. Without this work, universities risk reproducing the very inequalities they claim to dismantle.

Gail Crimmins, Associate Professor of Communication, University of the Sunshine Coast, Maroochydore, Australia

Promoting Education about Diversity

As researchers and educators who have been inhabiting contested terrain throughout our careers, we are not surprised when education becomes politicised. But we are surprised by the intensity and spread of the current attacks on social sciences and sexuality.

Neither social sciences nor sexuality education can hope to combat these attacks using logic and rationality because such debates are, at their heart, highly affective, transactional and political. Despite the attacks, sexuality education and social sciences continue. Governments desire to control them, to defund them, to ban them and remove academics and students who defend their disciplines. But sexuality and the social sciences are rhizomic, undisciplined and reliably ungovernable. While governments declare that there are only two genders, scientists, social media platforms, people of all ages and diverse embodiments across species and time tell us otherwise.   

Mary Lou Rasmussen, Professor of Sociology, The Australian National University and Louisa Allen, Professor of Critical Studies in Education, University of Auckland, New Zealand

Acting as Lighthouses in Difficult Times

Social Scientists are in a unique position to speak truth to power both within and outside academia. The study of LGBTQIA+ rights, experiences, and identities represents a case in point to this regard. Social Scientists and activists have helped us to understand the social, political, and legal struggles of LGBTQIA+ persons, affording scholarly and cultural dignity to this heterogeneous constellation of groups and individuals.  

Social Scientists can act as ‘lighthouses’ of knowledge in sombre times: shedding light on the pressing global issues of our societies and building the collective confidence to challenge them both in our personal and public lives.

Francesca Romana Ammaturo, Senior Lecturer in Sociology and International Relations, London Metropolitan University, UK

Understanding Healthy Relationships with Technology

The rapid development of digital and mobile technologies means we need social sciences now more than ever to understand the impact of technological advances on our lives, relationships and personal wellbeing.

The social scientific notion of ‘affordances’ recognises that technology does not determine behaviour but affords certain possibilities that are taken up in different ways across communities. For example, messaging apps afford immediate and intimate communication between individuals who are physically apart, akin to chatting privately to a loved one in the same room. These design decisions tap into social pressures to be constantly available to friends and family – or ‘always on’. It is only through social science research that we can understand how people maintain healthy relationships and attend to their own wellbeing in a technologically advanced society, and design and deliver the necessary policy and support.

Caroline Tagg, Senior Lecturer in Applied Linguistics, The Open University, UK

Offering Foresight in Climate Change and Environmental Debt 

Natural science has definitively documented that contemporary climate change is caused by human activities, especially those based on fossil fuels.  Social science also matters to understand even a biophysical problem like climate change as well as possible solutions.    

Fossil fuel producing companies and countries are using their massive resources to drill, pump and frack, thereby transferring carbon from the ground where nature had safely stored it to the sky where it results in greenhouse gases and global warming.  Social scientists won a Nobel Prize for proposing a polluter-pays solution, namely pricing carbon pollution so that an environmental debt does not accumulate.  Pay more now upfront in gas prices, plane and cruise tickets, etc., for the pollution fossil fuels cause to avoid paying much more debt over the next century for the wildfires, floods, insurance premiums, etc., they also cause.  Without foresight, the choice is to discount danger, defer payment, prioritize short-term over long-term affordability and support short-sighted leaders.

Raymond Murphy, Emeritus Professor, School of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Ottawa, Canada

Fostering Critical Thinking and Freedom of Expression

We live in an increasingly complex, interconnected—yet divisive—world. Researchers face intense political and financial pressures from multiple directions: policy narratives, government initiatives, funders and funding availability, the rapid emergence of artificial intelligence, and the ongoing neoliberalisation of academic work. These forces wield considerable influence and, arguably, determine who gets to conduct research, what topics are explored, and for what purpose. This increasingly restricts individual autonomy, critical thinking, and freedom of expression. 

On one hand, social science research has been co-opted by big business and transformed into a competitive tool for shaping how we understand the world. It has the power to generate both innovative ideas and significant profits. On the other hand, it can become a mechanism of “cancel culture,” fostering self-censorship, silence, intolerance, and fear of dissent. Our challenge as social science researchers is to continue listening—and to ensure our voices are heard authentically.

Geetha Marcus, Senior Lecturer in Teacher Education, The University of Edinburgh, UK

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