Social Science at the Crossroads brings questions of the future of the university, of democracy, of social science and religion to the front and offers analyses that point toward an overview of urgent problems in the current debate in social science.

Yehuda Elkana (1934-2012) was Professor of the History of Science, President and Rector of the Central European University (CEU) and before that Director of the Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas at Tel Aviv University. He also held a position at Harvard University and was Professor in the Theory of Science at ETH in Zurich. He was a co-founder and editor of the scientific journal Science in Context. His research areas included the history of philosophy, the history and theory of science, higher education and the future of the university. Shalini Randeria is Rector of the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM), Director of the Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy and Professor at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva. She has published widely on the anthropology of globalization, law, the state, social movements, as well as on post-coloniality and multiple modernities in India. Björn Wittrock is Professor at Uppsala University and Principal of the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, Uppsala and member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Academia Europaea and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has published widely on the history of universities, of social science, the Axial Age and global history. Wittrock was President of IIS in the years 2005-2013.