Since its foundation in 1978, the Centre for Social Studies has for its guiding mission contributing to the knowledge increase and the transformation of the societies' social and cultural reality, seeking to promote the standard of living, the social cohesion and inclusion and defend and dignify human rights. Through its excellence investigation, CES seeks to promote, beyond a scientific community-oriented impact, its research involvement with the societies, fostering instruments that value the knowledges produced by the CES community. In other words, our investigation seeks to foment the non academic impact of scientific investigation, in the areas of social sciences, arts and humanities, in their diverse dimensions and displays, at the local, national and international levels. This impact does not only circumscribe to the Portuguese reality, since CES develops multiple investigations which non acaedemic impacts repercuss in diverse social and cultural realities in the world.

Our impact, inherent to the CES' founding matrix, is assessed taking into consideration the investigation process, the acquired results and the transformation potential; be it through the development of pluralist epistemologies or innovating methodologies, or through their stimulus to the building of a science closer to society and for the society, or horizontally propelling the different existing knowledges in the academic community and overall in society.

Our objective of turning visible the non academic impact of our investigation is the demonstration that science as a whole is not isolated from the urgent problems of society. Therefore, we highlight some examples of our work, led by excellence investigators, whose research and results inform not only diverse public debates, but also engage in building  public policies oriented by our centre's pivotal values: justice, inclusion and democracy.