Human and Social Studies Foundation – Sofia (HSSF)

independent non-governmental organization

 

The organization was founded in 1990 as Association for disseminating scientific knowledge “Critique and Humanism” and in 2002 was re-registered as HSSF in compliance with the amended Act on the non-governmental organizations.

The mission of the HSSF is the mission of critical theory in the sense of Max Horkheimer: to use the theoretical and methodological resources of the human and social sciences to criticize societies today – to diagnose the most pressing problems for them, but also to search for ways to solve these problems and a change for better.

 

The mission of the HSSF is to promote scholarly exchange in social and human sciences by implementing research projects, a publication program and public debates:

  • Research Projects

The researches of the HSSF are strongly academic, but still focused on the current problems of the contemporary societies. The main goal of the HSSF is to use and develop the critical potential of the human and social sciences for diagnostics and analystics of the challenges that contemporary societies face – in Bulgarian, European and global contexts. In the last ten years, the HSSF has specialized in the analysis of the public sphere and media discourses, in particular national-populist narratives and Russian propaganda and disinformation, as well as of their social perception.

  • Publishing Activities

The HSSF is the publisher of the interdisciplinary academic journal Criticism and Humanism (two issues per year), of the electronic Bulletin of the HSSF “Anti-Democratic Propaganda”, as well as of numerous reports, collections and monographs.

  • Public Initiatives

The HSSF initiates and organizes numerous public forums – seminars, conferences, discussions, premieres, etc. The Foundation is among the co-organizers of the annual Sofia Information Integrity Forum (https://sofia-info-integrity.eu).

The HSSF works in cooperation with a large network of university centers, scientific institutions and non-governmental organizations in Bulgaria and Europe.

More about the Critique and Humanism Journal can be found here