Research Infrastructure Strategy Committee

Research in the Division of the Social Sciences is distinctive for its disciplinary and methodological diversity, covering the range from qualitative (including archival, field-based, and ethnographic work), to quantitative (including statistical, computational, and demographic work as well as field experiments) and laboratory methods (including behavioral experiments, cognitive neuroscience, hormonal assays, and animal neuroscience). These varied modes of inquiry depend on broad research infrastructures, including physical facilities, funding streams and administrative support.  Important, innovative, and field-defining work in the social sciences occurs in a wide range of contexts and at all different scales. It is our mission to support the advancement of all research in the Division at the scale necessary for it to flourish.  
 
Generations of SSD faculty and students have formed and transformed social science disciplines for nearly a century.  Continuing this arc, current rapid innovation across methodologies is reshaping scholarly understanding of social phenomena and creating unprecedented possibilities for intervention and policy engagement in areas as sweeping as climate change, social and economic inequality, education and the development of human potential, global and local challenges to democracy, technological and market innovation, and the social implications of artificial intelligence.  
 
To ensure that we are prepared to support the next generation of social science inquiry across fields and approaches, the Dean of the Division of the Social Sciences is convening a faculty committee to survey the Division’s research infrastructure and provide recommendations for how best to position SSD to continue to lead social science inquiry and innovation over the next decade. In this review “research infrastructure” is broadly construed to include the physical facilities, policies, and financial and administrative resources that support research across the social sciences. 
 
The committee is charged to: (1) conduct an extensive review of the infrastructure supporting research in the Division; (2) identify weaknesses and challenges as well as strengths and opportunities in our infrastructure; (3) formulate recommendations for strengthening our infrastructure in the short-term; and, (4) recommend investments to ensure the robustness of research innovation over the decade ahead.

Committee Members

Leslie Kay, Deputy Dean & Psychology, Committee Chair

Julie Chu, Anthropology

Michele Friedner, Comparative Human Development

Ali Hortasçu (Spring 2023) and Stéphane Bonhomme (Autumn 2023–Spring 2024), Economics

James Sparrow, History

Andrew Eggers, Political Science

David Gallo, Psychology

Joel Isaac, Social Thought

Geoff Wodtke, Sociology

Reports

Interim committee reports are being uploaded to Box as they are completed. The reports, which require an active UChicago CNet to access, can be found here.