The objectives of this Centre, as outlined by Roy Bhaskar

​

Objective 1: To imbue research with a coherent meta-theory in order to empower and impart greater coherence and consistency to it;

 

Objective 2: To fill the gap between practice and theory, and to avoid the pitfalls of naïve positivistic foundationalism and constructivist, poststructuralist, pragmatist or postmodern relativism alike, while retaining the strengths of these positions;

 

Objective 3: To develop a mediating level of theory and description between philosophy and the day-to-day concerns of social practice and research (included in 'social practice' are such things as educational practice, the practices surrounding democracy, medical practice, and the structural patterns of human interaction that underpin equality/inequality between, for example, races and genders);

 

Objective 4: To strengthen the relationship between research and policy, and between policy and practice, by providing more robust, judicious and coherent accounts of social practice;

 

Objective 5: To evaluate the relative merits of various descriptions of social practices (including alternative a priori, a posteriori, ex ante, ex post, and ‘causally predictive’ kinds of descriptions of social practices); and to develop and sustain better and more appropriate methodologies, in particular once based on a generative rather than a secessionist account of causal relations.

 

Objective 6: To explore the relationship between meta-theory and inter-disciplinarity, with the aim of deepening understanding of inter-disciplinary knowledge – producing better informed accounts than those (mainly developed on the basis of a single disciplinary context) hitherto available – and of the relationship between interdisciplinary and disciplinary knowledge.

 

Objective 7: To frame new agendas for social practice, which emphasize social justice and equality.