Institute for Social Science Research

02/24/2026

Join us on Thursday on preparing for sabbaticals. Faculty from the humanities and social sciences will share how they planned to get the most out of their time away. Attendees will be equipped with tools to plan purposeful, well-resourced sabbaticals that position them for their next career chapter.

This session is co-sponsored by UMass Office of Faculty Development.

Get more information and RSVP https://www.umass.edu/social-science-research/events/funding-fridays-thursdays-session-6-planning-sabbaticals-fellowships-funding-and-future

02/02/2026

ICYMI: We had much to celebrate last semester with former and current ISSR Scholars making the news.

01/30/2026

Happy first week of classes! ISSR is here to assist you on research and funding journey. Our first Funding Thursday session of the semester is one week from today on Data Management Plans, an important aspect of grant writing.

Get more information and RSVP: https://www.umass.edu/social-science-research/events/funding-fridays-thursdays-session-5-data-management-plans

Join us for the first Funding Thursday workshop of the spring semester!

This session will provide models and help you complete the data management plan for a proposal submission. Our guest speaker this week Jennifer Chaput, Data Services Librarian, will help you create a plan to keep your project data safe, secure, and well-organized.

Thursday, February 5
12:00-1:15
E20 Machmer Hall

Register now: https://www.umass.edu/social-science-research/events/funding-fridays-thursdays-session-5-data-management-plans

01/20/2026

Join us for the first Funding Thursday workshop of the spring semester!

This session will provide models and help you complete the data management plan for a proposal submission. Our guest speaker this week Jennifer Chaput, Data Services Librarian, will help you create a plan to keep your project data safe, secure, and well-organized.

Thursday, February 5
12:00-1:15
E20 Machmer Hall

Register now: https://www.umass.edu/social-science-research/events/funding-fridays-thursdays-session-5-data-management-plans

06/04/2025

The Consortium of Social Science Associations (COSSA) is a nonprofit advocacy organization working to promote and advance the social and behavioral sciences in federal policymaking.

In May 2025, the Trump Administration began releasing details of its budget request for fiscal year (FY) 2026, which begins on October 1. [Note: The FY 2026 budget request is different from the “One Big Beautiful Bill” that is working its way through Congress]. As details continue to emerge, we are witnessing a proposed slashing of federal science agency budgets and major reorganizations of agencies and programs.

So far, the President’s budget request includes:

A 56% cut to the National Science Foundation (NSF), including a dismantling of NSF’s STEM education training and research programs.
A more than 40% cut to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), as well as a consolidation of NIH’s 27 institutes and centers into 8, without consultation with the research or stakeholder communities.
A 67% cut to the Institute of Education Sciences within the Department of Education.
A zeroing out of the Department of Education’s International Education and Foreign Language Studies programs, known as Title VI and Fulbright-Hays.
An overhaul of the Department of Health and Human Services, including the consolidation of several agencies and crucial funding cuts across agencies.

Contact your House and Senate representatives today and urge them to REJECT the President’s FY 2026 budget request for federal science funding.

A consortium of Social Science Associations works to communicate the importance of social & behavioral science research to policymakers. The powerful stories come from people who express how it is like to apply for a federal grant, research, or watch as the findings reach audiences. Learn more.

04/29/2025

Next week: Engaged Audiovisual Ethnography and Ecological Crisis

Ecological Crisis & Autonomist Politics
Public Lecture
Wed. May 7 , 3:30-5pm
Rm 420 Thompson Hall

This talk unpacks efforts of social movements and indigenous communities to seek autonomy from political and economic systems driving the destruction of the planet as ecological crisis deepens across the globe.

Engaged Audiovisual Ethnography: A Visual Anthropology Practicum
Thursday & Friday May 8 & 9, 3:00-6:00pm
Location TBA, Space Limited, Register below

Combining art, media and ethnography produces unique practical and academic considerations. This 2-day practicum will explore the practice and function of multi-media ethnography for students of the social sciences. Participants will explore the complexities of representation across social boundaries, and the negative and positive social impacts audiovisual representation may engender. By the end of the workshop, participants will produce and share short videos conveying social phenomena through human experience. Spaces Limited. Register now! https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfhoqiwH0x4YwCaNdfOpbGZBvzltFWRx-OLdb_P-40Uf_5NOA/viewform

Dr. Joshua Holst has devised advocacy programs addressing human rights, environmental and social justice issues in the United States, the West African Sahara, the jungles of southeast Asia, and the highlands and lowlands of the Andes-Amazon region in Latin America. His work has focused on environmental justice, human rights reporting and advocacy, microfinance reform, emergency relief, youth homelessness, and human trafficking. He is an applied visual anthropologist, consulting for nonprofits and government agencies, directing documentaries, and publishing articles on humanitarian issues.

04/10/2025

Join us for the 2025 James Baldwin Lecture! Organized by UMass Amherst AfroAm and UMass Department of History, the lecture will be delivered by Steven Salaita.

Drawing on his memoir, An Honest Living, Salaita will explore questions of honesty and dishonesty on campus through an analysis of labor, inequality, alienation, and political violence on and off campus.

4/16, 6pm on campus at the Old Chapel and by Zoom. See link for details and to register:
https://websites.umass.edu/feinberg/the-meaning-of-honesty/

Offered every other year, the James Baldwin Lecture honors the late James Baldwin, who taught at UMass for several years. Each lecture addresses issues connected to social, economic, and political justice. This year's lecture is co-sponsored by Josephine White Eagle Cultural Center, and it is presented as the capstone event of this year's Feinberg Series.

04/10/2025

How Can Universities Navigate the Current Moment? Join us for this year's Freedman Lecture by Robert Shibley, Special Counsel for Campus Advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), and Hank Reichman, Former Chair of the American Association of University Professors' (AAUP) Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure, where they will discuss the future of higher education and academic freedom. The talk will be moderated by Jamie Rowen, Associate Professor of Legal Studies at UMass Amherst. This event is free and open to the public. Online registration is suggested: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe6U8NNJRVKMi007GD0UVbH6YDXshxbuMeg2IW7vjYJyKFo0w/viewform

2025 Freedman Lecture: How Can Universities Navigate the Current Moment?
Monday, April 14, 2025
4:00 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Old Chapel (upstairs in the Great Hall), UMass Amherst
Learn more: https://www.umass.edu/news/article/future-higher-education-academic-freedom-topic-2025-umass-amherst-freedman-lecture

Funded by Robert Rosen ('69) and Nancy Rosen ('70), the Freedman Lecture series is named for Ms. Rosen's parents, Max and Ruth Freedman. Since its initiation in 2016, the Freedman Lecture series has brought scholars and practitioners to the College of Social & Behavioral Sciences to discuss contemporary societal issues from different vantage points, leaving the audience with a richer appreciation of differing viewpoints and an example of how reasonable people can disagree without being disagreeable. Freedman lectures have tackled issues including immigration, universal basic income, and free speech.

This event is sponsored by the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences Freedman Lecture Series and cosponsored by UMass Faculty for Open Inquiry and the Massachusetts Society of Professors (MSP).

03/28/2025

Announcing the 2025 UACT Plug In!

Stop by the Bromery Center for the Arts from 4-6pm on Thursday, April 3 to eat, check out info/activity tables, view an exhibit on the history of activism at UMass, and attend short workshops led by powerful student and community organizers!

The Plug In is an annual event organized by the Anthropology Department's UMass Alliance for Community Transformation. This dynamic, participatory event is a chance for students, faculty, staff, and community members to “plug in” to campus and community organizing.

The event features short workshops by powerful campus and community organizers on themes including:

Campaign Strategy
Collective Debriefs
Drumming in Demonstrations
Know Your Rights
Movement Songs
Multi-Lingual Organizing
Militarism’s Grip on U.S. Universities
Mutual Aid
Nervous System Basics
Transformative Justice
Zine-Making
Time Banking
Mindfulness
….and More!

The History Department’s Feinberg Series are proud co-sponsors of this event!

Feinberg Series co-sponsors include:

Massachusetts Society of Professors - UMass Amherst Political Economy Research Institute - PERI UMass Amherst English Department Arts Extension Service UMass Amherst AfroAm Labor Center at UMass Amherst UMass Center of Racial Justice and Youth Engaged Research UMASS Film Studies School of Public Policy at UMass Amherst UMass Amherst Commonwealth Honors College College of Social & Behavioral Sciences UMass Amherst College of Humanities & Fine Arts at UMass Amherst Institute for Social Science Research UMass Amherst Economics Department and many more!

03/28/2025