Centre for Social Sciences Research & Action

The Centre for Social Sciences Research and Action, first founded in Lebanon in 2006 under the name of Lebanon Support, is a multidisciplinary space creating synergies and bridging between the scientific, practitioner, and policy spheres. The Centre for Social Sciences Research and Action aims to foster social change through innovative uses of social science, digital technologies, and publication and exchange of knowledge. We achieve our mission through transformative research and engagement, around the pillars of multi-disciplinary and contextualised research; tools for civil society actors, namely Daleel Madani the civil society network; and education for all, namely the Civil Society Incubator.

The centre conducts and facilitates original, interdisciplinary, and scientific research that is published in various formats (including a peer-reviewed journal “the Civil Society Review”, articles, policy briefs, mappings, and visuals). Research is developed and conducted by the centre’s hub of scholars, fellows, and network. It aims to publish grounded, contextualised, and transformative research, combining qualitative and quantitative methodologies. As an action-oriented research hub, the centre is committed to an open access policy, making all of the centre’s publications available to a wider public. This stems from the centre’s mission to foster social change and action through free access to information, innovative uses of social science, digital technologies, and publication and exchange of knowledge.

The centre adopts a participatory, grounded methodology that aims at informing multi-level action through evidence-based and contextualised knowledge. The interdisciplinary dimension of the centre’s research allows it to draw from, and build synergies across disciplines, as well as across the scientific, the practitioner, and the policy fields. This strives to contribute to critical thinking and action, and informing public debate and public policy.