Social Science Federation of Canada : The Social Science Federation of Canada was formed in September 1940 as a non-profit organization for the social sciences. It was originally called the Canadian Social Science Research Council and represented the disciplines of political science, economics, history, geography, sociology, and psychology. Its mandate was to promote research in the social sciences in Canada and to further the cooperation of scholars in its different branches. It has fulfilled its mandate by providing research grants and fellowships, supporting the publication of scholarly research, coordinating the conferences of learned societies, and acting as a lobby group for its members. The Social Science Federation supported the creation of the Canadian Federation for the Humanities in 1943 and the two organizations worked together closely during their existence, jointly administering the Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme and organizing the Learned Societies' conferences.
The Social Science Federation has received the funding to carry out its programs from different sources during its history. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, it depended on American philanthropic organizations like the Rockefeller Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation, and the Ford Foundation for most of its funding. The creation of the Canada Council in 1957 made the federal government its primary source of financial support, supplemented by the dues from its constituent associations and universities. It was renamed the Social Science Research Council of Canada in 1958 to reflect these changes.
The new government funding agency relied heavily on the expertise of the Social Science Federation in setting up its awards program and adjudication process. During the 1960s and 1970s, the federation evolved from a council of academic researchers into a federation of universities and learned societies representing a rapidly-growing number of disciplines within the social sciences. To avoid confusion, it changed its name to the Social Science Federation of Canada in 1977 when the federal government created the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, which had assumed responsibility for funding research in the humanities and social sciences from the Canada Council. The Social Science Federation of Canada and the Canadian Federation for the Humanities merged on 1 April 1996 to form the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada. In 2002 the merged organization adopted the new name of the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences.
