ISSR is proud to congratulate Elizabeth Evans, ISSR Scholar and Assistant Professor in the School of Public Health and Health Sciences, on the $10.2 million center grant awarded for the proposal she developed in her 2018 ISSR Scholars year in support of vital research on opioid treatment with incarcerated populations in Massachusetts. The ISSR Scholars Program is a proven investment in the  research and career development of promising UMass faculty, providing strategic grantsmanship mentoring and support to a growing cohort of social scientists across the UMass colleges and disciplines. 

We make social science but not out of conditions of our own choosing. While social institutions are a large part of the content of the social worlds that we investigate, our means of investigation are also affected by those very institutions. As social scientists we are thus always at risk of using some concept or idea or theory or instrument that may be ‘doing work’ that we might not first recognize. In other words, we may be unknowing carriers of political forces, intellectual pathologies, or be doing the bidding of some social forces we have inherited from the past. This article summarizes the discussion of how historical legacies that shape scientific research in ISSR's final panel on its 2019 seminar series on Social Science & Social Location.

Joya Misra, Professor of Sociology and Public Policy, has been appointed Director of the Institute for Social Science Research (ISSR) in the UMass College of Social and Behavioral Sciences (SBS), for a three-year term effective September 1, 2019. Misra succeeds Laurel Smith-Doerr, who has served as Director of ISSR since 2012, building it into a vibrant center for promoting excellence in social science research. Join us in congratulating them for their leadership and service to excellence in the social sciences across UMass.