Programs

ISPS sponsors various programs on campus, all with the aim of supporting and enhancing interdisciplinary research in the social sciences at Yale.

Center for the Study of American Politics

The Center for the Study of American Politics was created to promote the work of scholars in the field of American politics. Using a broad set of methodological approaches and enjoying the advantages of deep knowledge of American politics, Americanists have made signal contributions to our understanding of political institutions and behavior. The Yale Center for the Study of American Politics is dedicated to furthering this intellectual tradition.

Agrarian Studies

The Program in Agrarian Studies at Yale is an experimental, interdisciplinary effort to reshape how a new generation of scholars understands rural life and society. Our basic goal is to infuse categories of social science research in danger of becoming purely statistical and abstract with the fresh air of popular knowledge and reasoning about poverty, subsistence, cultivation, justice, art, law, property, ritual life, cooperation, resource use, and state action.

Yale University’s Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics

Yale’s Interdisciplinary Bioethics Center focuses its attention on bios or life, and the way we have helped, broken and abused it. Our primary focus has been, and will continue to be, biomedical ethics, but we are increasingly putting time and resources into issues related to ecology, environmental ethics, and care for nonhuman animals. Some current projects relate to research and treatment for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and problems faced by IRBs and the whole IRB system. We have strong interests in questions of health policy, cost containment and justice. We are dedicated to the teaching of ethics and mean to support and improve it in any way possible. Our main sources of support are the Office of the Yale Provost, the Institute for Social and Policy Studies, and The Patrick and Catherine Weldon Donaghue Medical Research Foundation.

The Program in Ethics, Politics, and Economics

The Program on Ethics, Politics and Economics sponsors interdisciplinary teaching and research in the Social Sciences and Humanities at Yale. It is designed to foster informed debate about public policy in the light of disciplined reflection on the fundamentals of human association. The Program was created in the belief that, for all the value of specialized fields and subdisciplines, these should not displace attempts to integrate empirical, analytical and normative concerns that range over different disciplines in the modern university. The complex social realities of our time demand a wide-ranging understanding of the human sciences on the part of citizens and leaders alike; EP&E seeks to provide it.