Words of Welcome from the Conference Co-Chairs
Dear speakers, participants, and guests,
We are delighted to welcome you to the 9th annual AESIS conference on the International Societal Impact of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts. After traveling to Denmark, Canada, Belgium, Sweden, Wales and South Africa, AESIS is excited to welcome you back to the United States. The University of Maryland at College Park is honored to host you for three days of exciting conversations and networking!
The social sciences, humanities and arts (SSHA) all play an essential role in navigating the grand challenges of our time, including climate change, food security, global health, protecting democracy, trustworthy and ethical technology, and social justice, among others. Without the expertise and insights of SSHA, our collective understanding of these landscapes will be limited and interventions will be ineffective, if not damaging.
Conferences like this provide a critical opportunity to share research and best-practices, forge partnerships, and amplify impact. Please take advantage of the meaningful discussions during the plenaries, sessions, receptions, breaks and social programs – share your experience and seek new perspectives from others. After all, it is only through inter-disciplinary and cross-sector collaboration that we will realize the potential of our contributions to society at large.
Kind regards,
Jean Marie McGloin, Ph.D.
Trevor S. Perry-Giles, Ph.D.
As universities continue to collaborate with government, industry, and nonprofit organizations to drive innovation, take on complex societal challenges, and contribute to the public good, best practices for building and sustaining these partnerships and measuring their impact are becoming increasingly important. At the same time, institutions are evolving toward interdisciplinary frameworks, community engaged research, and new approaches toward technology development that prioritize human-centered approaches. The social sciences, humanities, and the arts have an important role to play in this emerging landscape.
The University of Maryland, College Park will host an international Conference on the Societal Impact of SSHA: Grand Challenge-Inspired Research, Social Innovation, Trustworthy Technologies, and Partnerships to Advance the Public Good in partnership with the Network for Advancing and Evaluating the Societal Impact of Science (AESIS) on October 20-22, 2025. This three-day event will convene researchers, leaders, policy makers, funders, entrepreneurs, and publishers from around the world, representing academia, government, industry, and the nonprofit sector, to explore how best to operationalize societal impact and address critical global issues collaboratively with partner organizations and communities, harnessing expertise from across a variety of fields, highlighting the social sciences, humanities, and arts.
This conference is designed to delve into a range of topics that focus on generating and sustaining measurable impact on societal challenges through collaborative innovation. Conference attendees will exchange ideas, models, and best practices, and sessions will highlight successful approaches to developing new methods, policies, and tools for operationalizing societal impact. Examples of research, education, and innovation in the social sciences, humanities, and arts that are contributing to economic development and societal benefit related to environment, health, and education will be featured. The conference will explore efforts aimed at developing interdisciplinary ecosystems for impact, fostering regional innovation hubs and economic growth, developing ethical and trustworthy emerging technologies (e.g., AI), and addressing societal challenges through partnerships, community-engaged research, education, and service.
The conference will build community among international innovators, catalyze successful partnership models, and support inclusive engagement with underrepresented communities to ensure a robust and comprehensive exchange of ideas. The event will culminate in a summary of best practices and successful models for operationalizing social impact. The conference will tap into multiple national and international networks, ensuring a broad dissemination of outcomes.
Participants will engage in workshop sessions, interactive roundtables, and thought-provoking panels, each designed to equip them with strategies to operationalize and advance social impact. In addition to convening a diverse group of researchers and innovators from all corners of the world, the conference will seek to identify common approaches and methodologies to successfully achieve measurable societal impact, and result in actionable steps for continued engagement among participants.
Key Conference Themes
Key themes of the conference include:
Grand Challenge Inspired Interdisciplinary Research
Global grand challenges such as climate change, poverty, hunger, and access to clean water can help drive research potential toward societal impact. Organizing research teams around societal challenges requires interdisciplinary collaborations and expertise across multiple fields to address the problems and obstacles involved. The complexity of grand societal challenges means that a mission-based approach is needed, bringing together a variety of experts and sectors. Developing a sense of purpose, trust, and shared enterprise is key for successful collaborations. This requires an adaptation of traditional disciplinary organizational structures and operations within universities, and new approaches and methods for supporting interdisciplinary collaboration and for measuring and recognizing successful challenge-inspired research. In particular, this provides new opportunities for social sciences, humanities, and arts to help lead and forge collaborative efforts to take on complex challenges.
Representatives from grand challenges programs at the University of Maryland, University of California Los Angeles, University of Texas Austin, and Cardiff University, among others, will be invited to present.
Some of the guiding questions to be explored related to this theme include:
Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship
The conference will explore the intersection between supporting entrepreneurship activities and driving community outcomes and local economic development through social innovation. Sessions will explore how social innovation and entrepreneurship can be systematically supported in regional ecosystems in order to advance SSHA research and positively impact society. The conference will offer a unique opportunity to identify best practices, leverage industry and local government partnerships, and establish new models for how universities can boost social innovation and entrepreneurship for economic and societal benefit. Successful model programs in research intensive environments that enhance research translation, community engagement, and social enterprise creation and support will be highlighted.
This conference theme will dovetail with a pan-institutional project focused on developing cases of best practice for how universities across the UK, US and Canada are operationalizing social innovation and entrepreneurship programs and initiatives. American University, McMaster University, Cardiff University, and Johns Hopkins University will join the University of Maryland as primary partners in this initiative, and representatives from these universities and others will be invited to participate. The University of Maryland also leads the NSF I-Corps Mid-Atlantic Region Hub, which offers further synergy on this topic. The NSF I-Corps Mid-Atlantic Region Hub comprises 12 partner institutions, including Pennsylvania State University, University of Pennsylvania, Carnegie Mellon, George Washington University, Johns Hopkins University, Howard University, North Carolina State University, Virginia Tech, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, Hampton University, and University of North Carolina Charlotte, as well as the University of Maryland.
Some of the guiding questions to be explored related to this theme include:
Developing and Optimizing Ethical and Trustworthy Emerging Technologies
Emerging technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) present enormous opportunities for improving the quality of life for millions of people across the world in a number of areas, such as education, healthcare, security, and transportation. However, these technologies must be designed for the human contexts they are intended to serve, and should comply with the ethical values, human norms, and expectations of our society. SSHA researchers can contribute significantly to the optimization of these emerging technologies to help ensure that they are trustworthy and compliant, resulting in applications that are transparent, fair, and facilitate privacy.
University of Maryland researchers are teaming with colleagues at other institutions, including Cornell University, George Washington University, and Morgan State University, in this important area through the Artificial Intelligence Interdisciplinary Institute at Maryland (AIM), the Values Centered AI initiative, and the NSF Institute for Trustworthy AI in Law & Society (TRAILS).
Some of the guiding questions to be explored related to this theme include:
Community-Engaged Partnerships to Advance the Public Good
Achieving sustainable social impact requires partnerships across sectors. Successful partnerships bring a diversity of capabilities, stakeholders, and networks together contribute to the public good. Universities are increasingly prioritizing community engagement in their work to help advance research, education, and service activities.
These relationships require facilitation and support, and universities must invest in staff, resources, and long-term commitments in order to ensure the continued productivity and sustainment of these partnerships.
Some of the guiding questions to be explored related to this theme include:
Conference Objectives and Intended Outcomes:
Planned objectives and outcomes from the conference include the following:
Location:
As the largest public research university in the national capital region, the University of Maryland, College Park offers the unique capability to bring together a diverse range of organizations and individuals for the cross-pollination of ideas. Located inside the national capital beltway just a few miles northeast of Washington, DC, our College Park campus is at the center of a constellation of government agencies, professional associations, think tanks, international embassies, and national headquarters for a variety of nonprofits and corporations. This proximity provides us with the ideal opportunity to engage a plethora of organizations in this event. Our campus facilities are well-equipped to convene meetings, conferences, and strategic summits, and the DC Metro makes it easy for regional partners to travel to our campus. This setting provides an exceptional opportunity for attendees worldwide to network with one another and explore how universities can drive transformative societal change in collaboration with diverse sectors and organizations.
Conference Hosts:
The University of Maryland, College Park is the state's flagship university and one of the nation's preeminent public research universities. A global leader in research, entrepreneurship and innovation, the university is home to more than 40,700 students, 14,000 faculty and staff, and nearly 400,000 alumni. UMD is committed to social entrepreneurship, partnering for the public good, and taking on humanity’s grand challenges, as described in the university’s Fearlessly Forward strategic plan.
The Network for Advancing and Evaluating the Societal Impact of Science (AESIS) is an international, open community for various types of professionals working on stimulating and demonstrating the impact of science on economy, culture and well-being. The network consists of individual and institutional members from a variety of organizations from all over the world. AESIS members are involved in the evaluation of impact, research strategy and policy making, funding, and other impact support.
