About

SSRC funding and activities are designed to foster team-based and multi-method collaborative approaches to understanding complex, interdisciplinary questions that will help shape the emerging fields and sub-fields of the social sciences. 

SSRC offers comprehensive resources across five pillars of research support and engagement: Research Development, Funding, Programming Initiatives, Broader Impacts, and Shared Space.

The research development team supports faculty research from large-scale federally funded research projects and centers, to private research grants and contracts for individual investigators, to fellowships for faculty who wish to extend research leaves. Services are tailored to meet each researcher’s unique needs and might also include drafting standard grant sections, advising on project staffing and budget, providing substantive feedback and copyedits for proposal narratives, coordinating sub-awards and contracts, and convening mock review panels.

The RD team works with faculty in SSD, Harris School, and Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice. We also provide written materials and training opportunities to graduate students, postdocs, and research staff in these three units.

Our Grant Development/Support page links to tool kits we created for faculty and graduate students, as well as more information on compliance and University Research Administration (URA).

The SSRC administers a competitive seed grant program designed to support the most promising faculty-led, early-stage research with a special focus on projects designed to provide the “proof of concept” necessary for researchers to secure larger extramural investments. To date, the program has awarded $385K to 14 faculty members across six departments and has led to more than $6.7M in extramural funding. The SSRC also administers a number of competitive grants for graduate student research.

Our Funding page links to information on SSRC faculty and student funding, as well as curated lists of internal and external (foundation and federal) funding opportunitees that are applicable to social science researchers. We created lists for faculty and for graduate students.

SSRC hosts a wide variety of programming and workshops to support faculty and student research. Some aim to leverage the University’s research facilities and support operations, others convene faculty and students who use similar methods or focus on similar topics to cultivate collaborations, and some focus on grant-writing and specific funding agencies and mechanisms.

Our Resources and Initiatives page provides more information about SSRC events, projects housed at SSRC, as well as guides we have created on a variety of topics related to research skills, resources, training, and best practices, and links to University resources that facilitate research.

SSRC aims to bring research out of the academy and into the world through its Facilitating Thought Leadership and Alumni-in-Residence programs. SSRC also works closely with the Office of Civic Engagement to connect faculty researchers with community partners.

More information on Broader Impacts can be found on our Resources and Initiatives page.

The SSRC suite, located on the third floor of 1155 East 60th Street, contains 11 research team offices and 20 cubicles in the primary suite, as well as a small team breakout conference room and lounge in a designated collaboration area.

Our conference rooms are available for research teams to reserve via the Reserving Space at 1155 link and you can find more information about current research projects at Projects Housed at SSRC.