{"id":16941,"date":"2026-03-30T22:18:23","date_gmt":"2026-03-31T02:18:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ciss\/?p=16941"},"modified":"2026-04-01T09:31:37","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T13:31:37","slug":"bu-scholars-participate-in-cossa-2026-social-science-advocacy-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ciss\/2026\/03\/30\/bu-scholars-participate-in-cossa-2026-social-science-advocacy-day\/","title":{"rendered":"BU Scholars Participate in COSSA 2026 Social Science Advocacy Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"On March 24, 2026 CISS affiliates advocated for the critical role of federal support for social science research.\u00a0 Max Palmer,<\/a> Associate Professor of Political Science, Thomas Larsen<\/a> (CAS \u201926, Political Science, Public Policy and Data Science) and\u00a0Jessica Wong,<\/a>\u00a0BU director for federal relations, joined together in Washington, DC to participate in Social Science Advocacy Day on Capitol Hill, hosted by\u00a0COSSA (Consortium of Social Science Organizations).<\/a><\/p>\n

Social Science Advocacy Day <\/a>is an annual event that brings together social and behavioral scientists from across the country to meet directly with members of Congress and their staff. At a moment when evidence-based policy is more important than ever, participants advocated for robust federal support for social science research\u2013including social science grant funding and maintaining federal data infrastructure. This annual event includes a full day of orientation followed by a day of in-person meetings on Capitol Hill, where attendees share their work, highlight its real-world impact, and make the case for why continued investment in our fields matters. This year, more than 85 researchers and advocates from 24 states took part. Boston University serves as one of the event\u2019s co-sponsors.<\/p>\n

The BU team met with congressional staff in the offices of Senators\u00a0Ed Markey<\/a>\u00a0(D-MA), \u00a0Elizabeth Warren<\/a>\u00a0(D-MA), and Representatives Ayanna<\/a> Pressley (D-MA), and Jim McGovern<\/a> (D-MA).<\/p>\n

At these meetings, the BU team described their research and underscored the importance of federal data for a variety of social science research projects from voting rights and gerrymandering to housing and local politics. They also shared advances of BU social scientists\u2019 research on timely topics including misinformation and homelessness.<\/p>\n

\"\"Thomas Larsen, who is writing a senior thesis on \u201cUnderstanding how Misinformation has Changed Political Parties,\u201d found the day highly informative and inspiring. He shared with CISS \u201cCOSSSA Day was an incredible experience. The training on Monday was both interesting and extremely useful for preparing for the next day’s meetings. It was also interesting to see how these meetings work; it is something\u00a0we learn about in political science, but actually interacting with the government added important perspective. I also think we effectively conveyed the importance of social science research and highlighted some issues that might otherwise have gone overlooked.\u201d\u00a0Max Palmer echoed these sentiments, reporting that \u201cCOSSA Day was a great experience. I really enjoyed the opportunity to go. I also found the COSSA training on Monday to be really interesting and effective.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Wong, who is based in DC and whose day-to-day job is to advocate for BU\u2019s legislative priorities, commented on the unique importance of BU researchers speaking up for own their work and its impact. The BU delegation also learned that BU alumni are playing important roles in policy, thanks to their rigorous education. While the delegation was waiting to meet with Rep. Pressley\u2019s team, they met another staffer who graduated from BU and took Professor Palmer\u2019s Game Theory course!<\/p>\n

BU faculty in the social sciences who would like to attend a future COSSA Advocacy Day or nominate a student or postdoctoral scholar participant should contact CISS director Deborah Carr (carrds@bu.edu).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On March 24, 2026 CISS affiliates advocated for the critical role of federal support for social science research.\u00a0 Max Palmer, Associate Professor of Political Science, Thomas Larsen (CAS \u201926, Political Science, Public Policy and Data Science) and\u00a0Jessica Wong,\u00a0BU director for federal relations, joined together in Washington, DC to participate in Social Science Advocacy Day on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14414,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ciss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16941"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ciss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ciss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ciss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14414"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ciss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16941"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ciss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16941\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16963,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ciss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16941\/revisions\/16963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ciss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ciss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ciss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}