The importance of the topic will be explored in the next centuries because the

identified social conditions, exacerbated and created by the coronavirus, require

us to significantly rethink our ideas about society and some of the assumptions,
methods and theories of the social sciences. Covid-19 has created an unexpected
global economic crisis that has disrupted normal economic and management
practices. The impact of the crisis cannot be easily modelled using standard
social science methods. In the realm of political economy, there are also
unprecedented market transformations that cannot be modelled reliably. Tested
facts and hard evidence emerging out of scholarship that were once relied upon
as a ballast are now subject to ignore.

Previous research has confirmed that social sciences have a role to play in
helping to shape new forms of social solidarity. The humanities may have the
opportunity to be more humane in their aims and ambitions. To use the common
language of rediscovery in a new way, this moment provides an opportunity to
look at where social research has gone wrong and introduce new practices. This
discovery empowers scientists to build the society we want after the wave of the
pandemic reaches its crest. This question, for scholars, inherently represents a
type of robust social research and revitalized social communities.

Alondra Nelson indicated that this moment is an opportunity to envision the

education universe anew and to prioritize a culture of teaching, learning and
knowing that is equitable, collaborative, ethical and accessible. At the same
time, we are experiencing a rapid shift in the processes that play a key role in
the production of knowledge, which now comes virtually. The cycles and rituals
of education, final exams, peer review and the pace of scientific publications are
reimagined.

Despite prior evidence, previous SSRC collections over the past two decades,
collating the reflections and analyses of scientists, reveal the chronic nature of
human vulnerability and the increasing number of disasters and diseases that lie
at the interface of environment, culture and politics. Covid-19 is a kind of
social kaleidoscope, refracting social phenomena, collecting them in new and
familiar forms and with unaccustomed brightness.

Little attention has been paid to the coming months, when the Council will
intensify new work on the social, political, economic and psychological
upheavals caused by the coronavirus crisis. The SSRC Covid-19 platform will
be a "virtual research hub" for thinking about the impact of the novel
coronavirus, as well as considering what that impact means for the methods
being promoted by the social sciences today.
In light of changes in society, we must change social inquiry from imitating
society to a conscious dialogue with the world that it seeks to understand and
improve.

This is the time to create paths of knowledge to a better world.