British Academy: The UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences
Affiliation to International Organisations
The Academy is affiliated to a number of international organisations.
International organisations
ALLEA
The Academy belongs to ALLEA (http://www.allea.org), a grouping of European Academies. It was founded in 1994 by academies in Western and Eastern Europe, with the aim of strengthening the cooperative ties between them. ALLEA aims to provide national, international and supranational political organisations with advice on science policy. ALLEA, which currently has fifty-three member academies in forty countries, holds an biennial general meeting, and also has standing committees for intellectual property rights, and science and ethics; and working groups concerned with significant issues, including research cooperation, science and media, privacy in the information society and evaluation of science.
European Consortium for Asian Field Study
The Academy is a member of the European Consortium for Asian Field Study (ECAF) (http://www.ecafconsortium.com), an alliance of some forty European and Asian institutions concerned with Asian studies established in 2007. ECAF aims to provide field access and study facilities to European scholars through the sharing of a network of twenty-three existing research centres across Asia and to encourage joint interdisciplinary research programmes in the humanities and social sciences.
European Science Foundation
The Academy has recently resigned as a member of the European Science Foundation (http://www.esf.org), in the context of negotiations on a merger between the European Science Foundation and EUROHORCs (Heads of European Research Councils) and the creation of a new organisation. The membership of the new organisation would comprise major research funding and reseach performing organisations in Europe.
The Academy had been a member of the European Science Foundation (ESF) since 1974. The ESF is currently an association of over seventy Member Organisations devoted to scientific research (where science is taken to include the humanities and social sciences) in thirty European countries. Since its establishment in 1974, the ESF has coordinated a wide range of pan-European scientific and scholarly initiatives. The ESF maintains Standing Committees for the Humanities and for the Social Sciences as well as for the natural sciences, and addresses issues of European science policy.
International Human Rights Network of Academies and Scholarly Societies
The Academy is a member of the International Human Rights Network of Academies and Scholarly Societies. The Network assists scientists and scholars around the world who are subjected to severe repression solely for having nonviolently exercised their rights as promulgated by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It promotes institutional commitment to human rights work among academies and scholarly societies worldwide. The Network was founded in 1993 at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington DC, USA, and meets biennially.
Five national academies in the UK (The Academy of Medical Sciences, the British Academy, The Royal Academy of Engineering, the Royal Society and the Royal Society of Edinburgh) have established a UK Academies Human Rights Committee, with representation from all five bodies. The secretariat is currently held by the Royal Society of Edinburgh. The UK Committee considers cases raised by the International HR Network, and coordinates responses on behalf of all five academies.
International Social Science Council
The Academy has been a member of the International Social Science Council (ISSC) since 2008. The ISSC is an international non-profit-making scientific organisation with headquarters at UNESCO House in Paris. It is the primary international body representing the social and behavioural sciences at a global level.
The Council’s role is to advance the practice and use of the social and behavioural sciences in all parts of the world, and to ensure their global representation. It was founded in 1952, following a resolution adopted at the VIth UNESCO General Conference in 1951. The Council continues to be supported by UNESCO. In 1972 the Council was transformed into a formal federation of international disciplinary associations. In 1992 the constitution was amended to enable the membership of national and regional social science organisations. Today the ISSC is composed of a wide membership from which it draws its strength and its role.
Union Académique Internationale
The Academy was a founder member of the Union Académique Internationale (http://www.uai-iua.org), founded on the initiative of the French Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in 1919. The UAI aims to “encourage cooperation in the advancement of studies through collaborative research and publications in those branches of learning promoted by the Academies and institutions represented in the UAI – philology, archaeology, history, the moral, political and social sciences”. The UAI now comprises 46 member organisations in 39 countries and supports 55 projects.