What is Applied Social Science?
A brief introduction to the subject and differences between Social Policy and Applied Social Science The social sciences have a long and rich tradition within British universities with key subjects such as political science and economics well established by the early years of the 20th century. However, it was following the creation of a new wave of universities in the 1960s – including the University of York – that the social sciences gained a strong presence in British universities. At this time, combined social science degrees that facilitated the study of a range of social science disciplines in a singe programme were commonplace. But, as the 1960s universities grew in size there was a tendency for each subject to branch off in its own direction as scholars were keen to emphasize their own specialisms. Combined social science degrees became less common as consequence. During the 1990s and 2000s, this ‘compartmentalisation’ of social science knowledge into different disciplines was s
