The mission of IISS is to facilitate next-generation social science research at Berkeley. Starting from Berkeley’s disciplinary strengths in the social sciences, we foster an integrative research landscape. Our aim is to adapt, redeploy and expand Berkeley’s research assets to better meet the increasingly rapid pace of innovation in research design and the increasingly cross-disciplinary skill sets that need to be assembled to produce first-rate multi-methodological social science.  IISS accomplishes this mission in three ways. We incubate cross-disciplinary collaborations by sustaining an intellectual commons, a meeting place for the presentation and exchange of ideas. We make space for multi-method project-driven collaborations that bring together researchers from across the spectrum of Berkeley’s departments and professional schools. And we underwrite research innovation and risk-taking by servicing the administrative needs of our faculty’s research agendas in a common infrastructure.