Health, Care and the Body

Citizenship and Culture

Globalizing Culture

Institutions & Inequalities

Geographies of Globalizations

Governance & Development

Planning & Institutions

Urban Geographies

Democratic Representation

Transnational Configurations

Programme Groups

Programme Groups

Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research (AISSR)

The research programme is organised into twelve groups anchored in the four disciplines of 1) sociology, 2) political science, 3) anthropology, and 4) geography, planning & international development studies.

Each programme group is led by a Programme Director. The programme groups are the primary units for academic staff in terms of research and teaching activities; they are relatively autonomous, with practical responsibility for both research strategy and teaching curriculum content being assigned within the relevant discipline or sub-discipline.

Each programme falls under the general responsibility of the Academic Director (Prof. Dr. Anita Hardon), and is represented on the AISSR Programmes Council.

Sociology and Anthropology

Anthropology of Health, Care and the Body

The research programme has an interdisciplinary character, including researchers working in the fields of medical anthropology and sociology, postcolonial, gender and sexuality studies, and the social studies of (bio)medical science and technology.

Dynamics of Citizenship and Culture

Researchers of the sociology Program Group Dynamics of Culture and Citizenship examine how globalization and the concomitant economic transformations, demographic changes and welfare state restructuring have given rise to new class differentials, new risks, and new deliberations and conflicts over citizenship and belonging in western nation-states in general and urban neighborhoods in particular.

Globalizing Culture and the Quest for Belonging: Ethnographies of the Everyday

The unifying question running through the research programme is how people in diverse places and from distinct vernacular and historical traditions interpret and remake themselves in the tension between cultural ideals and practical necessities and strictures imposed by global economic, political and cultural flows.

Institutions, Inequalities and Internationalisation

The mission of this Research Programme is to conduct sociological research in a historical and comparative perspective; to focus on contemporary society; and to investigate social developments transcending the boundaries of the local setting or national society. The programme will focus less on the local level and on tensions between the national and international.

Moving Matters: People, Goods, Power and Ideas

The social consequences of the mobility of people and goods constitute the central focus of this research programme. We explore migrating people and moving commodities as well as the shifting networks (of solidarity, remittances, knowledge, meaning and power) that result from such practices.

Human Geography, Planning and International Development Studies

Geographies of Globalizations (GoG)

Since the mid-1970s the world is experiencing a second wave of globalization resulting in unpredictable but radical redistributions of human activities over different spatial scales. This research programme starts from the empirical observation that what we are confronted with is a set of differentiated articulations of globalization at multiple scales, that are best seen as the unintended effect of the strategic engagements of many different agents, motivated by different goals, interests and preferences.

Governance and Inclusive Development (GID)

The mission of the research programme is to promote research on governance issues from the perspective of the global South, and to provide better inter-disciplinary understanding of how processes of governance can deal with inequalities and poverty issues at different and linking scale levels.

Planning, Institutions and Transforming spaces (PIT)

The interrelationships between social and spatial interaction, on the one hand, and the need for taking collective action to transform spaces on the other is the research area of the group.

Urban Geographies (UG)

The aim of the group's research programme is, first of all, to gain a better understanding of the complex, diverse and mutual relationships between the development of urban spaces and places, time-space behaviour, and individual life courses and life chances.

Political Science

Challenges to Democratic Representation

What are necessary and sufficient conditions under which democratic regimes can maintain stability and safeguard basic principles of democratic accountability, representation and legitimacy. In this research program, we address this classic theme from the perspective of normative democratic theory and by way of empirical inquiry. Recognizing that democracy is also a historically contingent politically practice, issues of change over time will be embedded in our analytic approaches as well.

Political Economy and Transnational Governance (PETGOV)

Transnational integration of political and economic transactions are giving rise to far-reaching transformations of governance both within and beyond the nation-state. This Research Programme brings together political scientists whose research agenaas are rooted in the fields of political economy, public policy, and international relations, but who share an abiding interest in the drivers, dynamics, and consequences of these epochal developments in political and economic life.

Transnational Configurations, Conflict and Governance

This research programme has two interlinked core research areas related to the transnationalisation of politics and societies: conflict and institutional transformation. Both lines question established notions of identities, categorizations and boundaries defined by classical political science concepts and delve into the transformations of institutions, representation, legitimacy, and citizenship traditionally associated with a state-centric paradigm.

Video Urban Studies

International Scholars on Urban Studies at the University of Amsterdam

The future of Social Science Research

Video: AISSR researchers present current research projects and reflect on social sciences in the Netherlands

For Staff AISSR

Information for the staff of the AISSR

Research Priority Areas

Focus on scientific excellence.

The transnational modelling industry and the social shaping of beauty standards in six European countries