Center for Innovation in Social Science

The Center for Innovation in Social Science (CISS), founded in 2021, is an intellectual home for faculty, postdocs, graduate students, and undergraduates doing social science research across the BU campus. We are dedicated to supporting path-breaking research and training future generations of social science students by using state-of-the-art methods and demonstrating the promise of social sciences to improve human lives. Our faculty and students are studying cutting-edge issues like immigration, climate change, population aging, poverty, incarceration, global epidemics, misinformation, voting behavior, and much more. CISS provides undergraduate students hands-on research experience through our paid undergraduate research internship program and our newly launched Social Science Summer Writing Internship, designed to train the next generation of social science writers and journalists. Our graduate students also receive paid research experience at local non-profit organizations, applying social science and methods to real-life contexts.

In 2025, we launched our inaugural Dissertation Fellowship for an outstanding PhD student whose research embodies CISS goals. CISS also supports faculty research through pilot grants, paid student research assistantships, book workshops, professional development workshops, and much more. BU social scientists do research that matters, and that can provide evidence-based solutions to contemporary global concerns.

Your generous gifts will support paid undergraduate academic-year research internships, summer research and writing internships, faculty member research consultancies, travel awards to present research findings or conduct research off-site, training support, research supplies, and more.

A gift of:

• $250 would support an undergraduate student’s travel to present their research at a regional academic conference.
• $500 could cover a PhD student’s tuition at a summer workshop to learn a new language or hone their research methods and statistical skills.
• $1,000 would help an assistant professor to host a book workshop where they would receive expert feedback on their first-ever book manuscript.
• $2,500 would provide a paid academic year internship for an undergraduate research assistant, as part of our Undergraduate Research Mentored Research Assistantship program.
• $5,000 would fund a faculty pilot grant, designed to forge an innovative interdisciplinary research project among BU social scientists.
• $15,000 would fund a one-semester dissertation-finishing fellowships for BU’s outstanding PhD students.
• $45,000 would fund a year-long dissertation-finishing fellowship for an outstanding BU PhD student.

Thank you in advance for supporting the Center for Innovation in Social Science! Pictured here: Social Science Summer Writing Program interns.

Center for Innovation in Social Sciences Matching Challenge: Gifts to the Center for Innovation in Social Sciences will be matched dollar-for-dollar up to $2,500.