THE NATIONAL CENTRE FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH (EKKE)

​The National Centre for Social Research (EKKE) is a public law legal entity supervised by the General Secretariat of Research and Technology of the Ministry of Development and Investments. EKKE was established in 1959, under the auspices of UNESCO, and is the only public research institution in the area of social sciences in Greece. Since its establishment, EKKE has been carrying out research on a variety of topics and scientific areas addressing socio-economic needs and cultural-political trends of the Greek society. Attuned to critical social issues, EKKE’ research personnel is active in the areas of social and economic inequalities and exclusion, immigration, social and economic stratification, social mobility, social economy and entrepreneurship, the labour market, gender studies, demographic trends, political culture and behaviour, mass media and political communication, social cohesion, deviation and delinquency, cultural identities, cultural sociology, social memory, social history and urban and rural environments. Besides monitoring and recording the social, economic, cultural and demographic structures and trends of Greek society, EKKE actively supports governmental and local administration institutions, designing and evaluating policies at the national, regional and local level, drawing up plans, providing recommendations and consultancy services to institutions and authorities such as Parliament, Ministries and National Authorities, assessing public and private projects and operational programmes. Recently, EKKE has become part of the Hellenic Statistical System and, therefore, part of the European Statistical System (ESS), as a national authority responsible for the development, production and dissemination of European Statistics (Article 5 of Regulation (EC) 223/2009).

EKKE holds four Laboratories and three Observatories that serve as research infrastructures to facilitate research personnel in attracting external funding, organizing research and academic activities, and offering consultation to public bodies and civil society stakeholders. The existing research infrastructures are allocated in the two Institutes of EKKE which are its basic research and organizational units: The Institute of Social Research (IKE), established in 2012, and the Institute of Political Research (IPE) established in 2019.

​The Institute of Social Research (IKE) aims at conducting basic and applied, quantitative and qualitative, research. More specifically, it focuses in the following thematic areas: a) the research of the demographic, social, economic, spatial and cultural changes in the Greek and the European societies; b) the diagnosis, analysis and planning of social policy and economic development issues which are of concern in Greek society and European space; and c) the study of social and economic institutions and the investigation of values in Greek and European societies in comparative, contemporary and historical context. The Institute of Social Research has 28 permanent research staff that includes 18 experienced researchers and 10 assisting researchers spread over a wide range of (sub)disciplines such as sociology, geography, planning, economics, statistics, political science, social policy, social psychology, anthropology, etc., while also there are over thirty-five (35) external researchers. EKKE and more particularly the Institute of Social Research has implemented numerous nationally and EU-funded projects, but also projects funded by various international organizations such as the World Bank and the Volkswagen Foundation.