The vision of the Institute is that of an encouraging and interdisciplinary community of researchers which nurtures a pluralism of theoretical perspectives and research orientations and which functions as an internationally relevant academic center of excellence for the humanities and the social sciences. The Institute fosters an environment for socially and scientifically relevant, multi-perspective, and interdisciplinary theoretical and empirical research that reflect the complexity of methodology and content as well as the challenges of the contemporary age while taking into consideration historical currents.
The Institute operates both in Serbia and in the region as a paradigm of commitment to the consistent application and improvement of good practices in theoretical and empirical research, thus stimulating the elevation of academic standards in the domestic context and the productive cooperation with relevant actors both in academia and beyond. With this, the Institute seeks to emphasize the importance of the public role of the social sciences and the humanities. The Institute is developing the field of engagement studies in the spirit of multi-disciplinarity and constant dialogue by thematizing the social, cultural, and political movements that strive for active change of the status quo as well as the individual and communal power of agency. At the same time, the Institute is involved in questioning the effectiveness of engagement, emancipation, solidarity, and resistance both in the wider social context and in the context of everyday experience.
Development goals in the following five-year period
- Intensifying cooperation with the relevant foreign institutions and the diaspora through the multiplication of joint activities, projects, and exchanges which is reflected in the confirmation of at least 12 new cooperation agreements with defined joint activities;
- Doubling the share of non-budgetary funds in the overall budget which will enable the separation of the budget line for new initiatives and programs as well as for supporting professional development opportunities for employees;
- Creating a systemic support framework for development by establishing a fund for research development and the improvement of mentoring work with younger researchers;
- Increasing the international influence and raising the quality of the Institute’s scientific production by indexing the journal of the Institute in the relevant databases and doubling the share of published works of researchers in indexed international journals;
- Establishing new and inclusion in existing postgraduate studies within the fields of activity of the Institute, in accordance with legal possibilities.