The Centre for Social Science Research (CSSR) has always been comprised of research units as well as stand-alone projects. Over the past twenty years, a number of units have left the CSSR to become free-standing groupings. Other units have joined or have been established within the CSSR. It is illustrated by the timeline below:
Establishing the CSSR
When it was established in 2001, the CSSR comprised the already-established AIDS and Society Research Unit (ASRU), a new Social Surveys Unit, now renamed the Sustainable Societies Unit (SSU), a new Democracy in Africa Research Unit (DARU) and a new Data First Resource Centre (formed out of the Southern African Labour and Development Research Unit, SALDRU). In 2002, the rest of SALDRU also joined the CSSR. In 2005 the Data First Resource Centre and SALDRU left the CSSR and became two independent units.
Major Developments in the Recent Past
- The immigration of the Policy Research in International Services and Manufacturing (PRISM) into the CSSR in 2009, and its leaving to become independent in 2011;
- The establishment of a Families and Society Research Unit (FaSRU) in 2014 and its suspension in 2021;
- The establishment of an independent Institute for Democracy, Citizenship and Public Policy in Africa (IDCPPA), comprising DARU and selected projects from the CSSR, in 2017;
- The cooperation with biological scientists to establish an independent Institute for Communities and Wildlife in Africa (iCWild) in 2017 out of the work from the SSU;
- The immigration of the Safety and Violence Initiative (SaVI) in 2018/19 into the CSSR;
- The establishment of the Adolescent Accelerators Research Hub (AARHub, housing a portfolio of research on adolescent development including the UKRI GCRF Accelerating Achievement for Africa’s Adolescents Hub) in 2018/19;
- The suspension of the AIDS and Society Research Unit (ASRU) in 2021.
Present
Currently, the Centre for Social Sciences is comprised of the Adolescent Accelerators Research Hub, the Safety and Violence Initiative and the Sustainable Societies Unit.