In partnership with the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) is holding a Winter School for senior PhD students and postdoctoral fellows in the social sciences and humanities (SSH). Emphasizing the use of empirical research, the school will explore critical questions in SSH as well as real-world implications for and inclusion of policy and the arts. The School will be held in St Gallen, Switzerland from 26 to 28 January 2027 (arrivals January 25).

Deadline for applicants based in Canada: 7 October 2026
Deadline for applicants based in Switzerland: 28 October 2026

Students might examine questions across the following themes:

Epistemology and Sociology of Knowledge

• What counts as "evidence" across disciplines & how is it interpreted?
• Who defines what is “legitimate” evidence and whose voices are left out? 
• How can interdisciplinary initiatives reconcile competing, discipline-specific definitions of shared concepts to establish a common language?

Policy and the Public

• How can empirical data be shared, contested, and used in public spaces?
• How can art be used as evidence and evidence be used as art? 

Research Ethics and Justice

• How might creating “data-driven policy” reduce and instrumentalize complex human lives?
• How might descriptive uses of facts and data (what the world actually looks like) constrain normative approaches (what the world should look like), particularly in ethical dilemmas such as rights to land, healthcare, and resource distribution?
• What kinds of research methods can enable research subjects to reveal their capacities rather than their deficiencies?
• In the translation of political theory into social practice, how do normative frameworks navigate the tension between empirical constraints and utopian ideals, and how can the social sciences be integrated into normative critique without reducing political imagination to status quo bias?