Fellows' Area
Being elected a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences is a measure of the highest esteem in your which peers hold you, and recognises your expertise and contribution to the social sciences.
This page helps you to understand more about your Fellowship, including how you can get involved with the Academy’s work and contribute to our events and other activities. There are also links to how you can pay your subscription, nominate a Fellow and some frequently asked questions which should help you navigate your Fellowship.
Without our member learned societies and our Fellows, we could not act as our sector’s leading independent voice in the UK, championing the vital role the social sciences play in education, government and business. Thank you for your support which allows us to continue this vital work.
About your Fellowship
Fellowship of the Academy provides recognition for your contribution to the social sciences through:
- Using the post-nominals FAcSS and introducing yourself as a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences
- Making a Fellowship nomination to recognise excellence in others
Fellowship also provides opportunities to:
- Engage with a network of social scientists through the Academy’s work to promote the value of the social sciences
- Be listed on the Academy’s publicly available Directory of Fellows
- Contribute your expertise to evidence-based consultation responses, reports and comment pieces
- Attend, participate in or organise an event
- The potential to have your work profiled through Meet our Fellows, I’m a social scientist or amplified on social media
- Join one of the Academy’s committees or working groups to help shape our work
- Receive a copy of the Academy’s journal Contemporary Social Science
- Attend the Annual General Meeting and be entitled to vote for the Academy’s elected trustees
How to contribute towards the Academy's work
We encourage our Fellows to act as advocates not just for their own disciplines, but for the social sciences as a whole. We hope that our key messages about why the social sciences matter will help you to do this. These messages have been designed to kickstart conversations and to explain to people what our disciplines are, why their research matters, and the impact it makes on our daily lives.
Other ways in which you can support the Academy’s work include:
- Advocate for the social sciences: Be proud of, and say, you are a social scientist! Academy work has shown the term is poorly understood outside of academia.
- Contribute your expertise: submit an evidence-led comment piece for our Campaign hubs or a paper for our journal.
- Enable a local presence: use your networks to promote social science in your nation/region or contact us about possibly hosting a joint event. This is particularly valuable for our policy and engagement work.
- Enhance our profile: follow us on social media, repost our news and share links to our podcast.
- Enrich our community: submit Fellows’ news stories for our website/eBulletin.
- Extend our reach: publicise the work of the Academy to your networks.
- Invest in our future: leave us a legacy to help us promote social science.
- Partner with us: consider the Academy, with its convening and networking strengths, as a project collaborator.
- Pay your subscription by direct debit: reducing our administration costs.
- Promote the social sciences to your networks: Ensure your students and colleagues understand they are social scientists as well as discipline specialists.
- Share your experience: apply to join one of our committees or stand for election to the Council.
- Sustain an excellent Fellowship: nominate outstanding social scientists for Academy Fellowship.
Nominate a Fellow
The Academy of Social Sciences welcomes nominations for new Fellows from our existing Fellows.
The paramount requirement for successful nomination is evidence of eminence in their field and impact of their wider contribution to social science. This contribution can be in any area, discipline or inter-disciplinary social science and can include research, teaching, professional practice, policy or public impact, consultancy and the promotion and dissemination of social science knowledge.
FAQs for Fellows
Answers to some of our most frequently asked questions to help you get the most out of your Fellowship. Click on the questions on the left to see answers appear on the right.
Your subscriptions are vital to supporting the work of the Academy. You can pay your annual subscription in a number of ways including via direct debit, paypal and bank transfer.
Visit our pay your subscription page for information about Fellowship rates and instructions for setting up your preferred payment method.
If you need to update your details for our online Fellows Directory, please complete this online form.
Nominations for Fellowship can be made by current Fellows or member social science societies (accredited or unaccredited). The paramount requirement for successful nomination is evidence of eminence and impact of the nominee’s contribution to social science.
To make a Fellowship nomination as a Fellow, visit our Make a Nomination as a Fellow page. Be sure to read the guidelines, checklist and exemplar nominations carefully before submitting a proposal to make sure you’ve included all the information we need to properly assess your suggested nominee.
Fellows have free online access to Contemporary Social Science via the publisher’s website. To register for an account, please visit the Taylor & Francis help centre.
The Academy has a series of policies that guide our work, including our approach to AI, our event guidelines and also our equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) statement. You can find these on our corporate publications page, or you can access them via the links below.
The Academy is incorporated as a company limited by guarantee no 3847936 and is registered as a charity no 1088537. You can find the Academy’s governing documents, including its finances, at the bottom of our About us page, or they are linked below.