GenQ - For the not so straight individual

Possibly for the first time in the UK, students at the University of Sussex have set up a research centre of major international importance that is being run entirely by students. The Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society (SCIS) is independent of the University of Sussex and its administrative structures. Although SCIS is based on Sussex campus, the centre has been set up and is being run by PhD students without any involvement of university management. In spite of its independence, SCIS has found the support of an outstanding International Advisory Board of world-renowned scholars from top universities such as Harvard, Berkeley, UCLA, etc. SCIS' Senior Research Associates are full professors at the universities of Liverpool and London (see www.scis-calibrate.org).

Says Calestous Juma, a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, "It's an area that is not really very well studied . I couldn't think of a serious body of theory around which you could organise an analytical framework on this."

It may seem surprising that a concept used as frequently as "the individual and society" should not have given rise to as many research institutes at universities all over the world. In fact, there appears to be no research centre at any university in the world that applies itself to looking at the individual and society in breadth and depth and from a variety of angles. In creating a research centre dedicated to "the individual and society" SCIS' founders filled this gap.

Research in SCIS is being undertaken around three research clusters - study of the individual, study of collectivisms, and development studies. The latter focuses on studies to do with the impact of "the individual and society" in social and economic development and comparative and cross-cultural research into these and related concepts.

SCIS is working at the same rigorous intellectual level as the world's foremost universities and research centres. Differently from these, SCIS does however not feel bound by prevailing paradigms of social and political discourse. SCIS aims to shift paradigms.

SCIS wishes to create a worldwide inter- and transdisciplinary network of highly original researchers, particularly in the social sciences and humanities, and artists - a network of people who feel that the current higher education system stifles their abilities and potential.

Members of SCIS' International Advisory Board include world-renowned academics such as Prof John Friedmann (British Columbia, UCLA), Prof Calestous Juma (Harvard, Kennedy School of Government), Prof Ernesto Laclau (Essex, Northwestern, New School for Social Research), Prof Francis Sch