Thematic Foci 1973 - Present

2025-26  Digital (In)Equality

2024-25  The Politics of Migration and Displacement as a Form of Life

2023-24  PLATFORM

2022-23  Climate Crisis Politics

2021-22  Political Mobilizations and Social Movements

2020-21  Science and the State

2019-20  Economy and Society

2018-19  Crisis and Critique

2017-18  The Social Sciences in a Changing World

2016-17  Law and the Social Sciences

2015-16  Borders and Boundaries

2014-15  Egalitarianisms

2013-14  The Environmental Turn and the Human Sciences

2012-13  Economics and Politics

2011-12  Morals and Moralities

2010-11  Secularism

2009-10  The Dewey Seminar: Education, Schools and the State

2008-09  Social Norms and Cooperation

2007-08  The Rule of Law Under Pressure

2006-07  The 'Third World' Now

2005-06  Psychology and Economics

2004-05  Interdisciplinarity and Its Objects

2001-04  Ethics and the Social Sciences: Present Directions

2003-04  The Social Implications of Bioethics

2002-03  Politics and Ethics: The Case of Corruption

2001-02  Economics and Business Questions

2000-01  Information Technology

1997-00  Globalization and the Different Kinds of Local Resistance to It: A Three-Year Program

1999-00  Universalism of Human Rights

1998-99  Political Economy

1997-98  Cultural Globalization

1993-97  Transitions: A Four-Year Program

1996-97  Development of “Interpretive Social Science”

1995-96  Modernization and Its Discontents

1994-95  Traveling Reform Movements: Feminism and Environmentalism

1993-94  Politics

1990-93  New Perspectives on Social Science and Humanities Scholarship: A Three-Year Program

1992-93  Philosophy and Sociology of Science

1991-92  Ethics, Politics and Law

1990-91  Philosophy of History 

1987-90  Group Identities: A Three-Year Program

1989-90  National Identity in Post-Colonial Third World States

1988-89  Political Revival of Ethnicity and Religion

1987-88  Gender

1984-87  Interpretive Social Science: A Three-Year Program

1986-87  Research Methods in Interpretive Social Science

1985-86  Social Experience of Equality and Inequality

1984-85  The Life History of the Individual

1983-84  Toward a Broader Economics

1982-83  Social and Cognitive Psychology

1979-82  Self-Perception, Mutual Perception and Historical Development (This 3-year focus, jointly organized by the SSS and SHS, and funded by the Mellon Foundation, ran concurrently with the individual theme years.)

1981-82  Problems in Political Philosophy

1980-81  The Comparative Impact of Colonial Regimes on the Newly Independent Countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America

1979-80  The Sociology of Art

1978-79  New Trends in Economic Thought

1977-78  Problems of Advanced Capitalist Societies

1976-77  The Sociology of Science

1975-76  The Analysis of Symbolic Structures

1974-75  The Social, Economic and Political Development of Latin America

1973-74  Islamic Societies