What Is Social Science?

Hello, my name is Professor Duncan Foch as Head of the College of Social Science and I welcome you all to the College here at the University of Lincoln. The College of Social Science is made up of six academic schools, covering a broad array of subjects including psychology, law, nursing and related professions, social work and health and social care, sports and exercise science, criminology, politics, sociology and education. A key feature of the University of Lincoln is our commitment to being one community, that students are an indispensable component of this broader university, along with academics, researchers and professional service colleagues. Whatever subject you are seeking to study, we pride ourselves that you will also be a member of the College of Social Science. Social science asks the big questions of and for human societies. Society is made up of many key systems including education, health, law and order, religion and family. More than ever, we are challenged to appreciate more fully how such systems operate, how they interact, how we engage with such systems and how we perceive ourselves and others within them. Social science sits alongside the natural sciences, economics, technological advances, issues relating to our physical and mental health and our love of the arts and it asks those broader questions, often the more challenging ones. Ultimately, it allows us to bring fresh understanding to human society, both in this country and further. As a diverse array of disciplinary perspectives and practices, social science, through the development of both substantive knowledge and critical skills, helps us to better understand how we live and to contextualise our role in those larger challenges. For example, globalisation, political change, economic upheaval, climate change. Through the lens of such fundamental concepts of justice, well-being, identity and governance and being purposely international in context and progressive in output, social science thus provides the tools to better understand ourselves. Whether through our teaching, our research or our civic engagement, the College of Social Science seeks to understand, to open up, to critique and yet to promote and prepare for and for some of our degrees specifically to train an intellectual and pragmatic approach to addressing the challenges in modern society. I look forward to welcoming you further on to your studies later in the year.