Societies able to read their own transformations.
A public life in which people can understand the forces shaping their realities, deliberate across difference, and participate in building more just, peaceful, and sustainable futures.
TIDAInstitute for Social Inquiryand Public Dialogue
About TIDA
Independent · Multidisciplinary · Strasbourg, France
We begin with life
as it is lived.
TIDA begins with the questions people carry through ordinary life—about belonging and dignity, work and services, rights and power, identity, the environment, and the futures they are trying to build. We bring those questions into rigorous social inquiry, public dialogue, and action.
01 — Who we are
Why TIDA exists
Where knowledge
meets life.
A question may first appear at a kitchen table, in a queue for a public service, in a classroom, at a border, or in the uneasy feeling that decisions are being made somewhere else. For TIDA, social inquiry begins right there.
Founded by sociologist and practitioner Asseel Alousi, TIDA grew from more than two decades of work across research, civil society, institutions, dialogue, and the realities people live every day. That experience showed what becomes possible when knowledge stays close to life and public action is rooted in understanding.
We follow everyday questions into their deeper social, political, legal, economic, cultural, and environmental dimensions. We explore the histories, institutions, inequalities, identities, relationships, fears, and aspirations within them, then bring what we learn back into public life.
We are building an institute and expert network where disciplines meet people, contexts speak to one another, and knowledge becomes a shared capacity to understand, choose, and act.
Carry lived questions into knowledge—and knowledge back into life.
We investigate questions rooted in society, connect different forms of expertise, open them to public dialogue, and translate what emerges into accessible knowledge, policy choices, collective solutions, and informed action.
Our living cycle
Think
Dialogue
Transform
Listen for the question inside everyday experience: what people are living, noticing, fearing, contesting, or hoping to change.
Move from the immediate question to its deeper structures. Read institutions, power, culture, history, and lived experience together, then investigate before offering answers.
Bring research into serious exchange with communities, practitioners, public actors, and different forms of expertise. Dialogue tests the research, challenges its assumptions, and brings it closer to lived reality.
Return knowledge to public life as clearer choices, policies, collective solutions, institutional learning, and action. What happens next becomes part of the inquiry and opens new questions.
What guides us
Principles before
programmes.
Our values are working commitments. They shape how questions are selected, whose knowledge is heard, how partnerships are formed, and how findings are communicated.
Intellectual independence
Public value and scholarly integrity guide our questions, methods, and conclusions across every partnership.
Rigour close to life
We use rigorous methods that keep knowledge close to the people, places, and realities it seeks to understand.
Plurality of knowledge
Research, professional expertise, local knowledge, and lived experience meet in the same inquiry, each revealing a different part of the picture.
Dialogue as a method
Dialogue is a disciplined part of the research: it tests assumptions, widens understanding, and produces better questions.
Context before prescription
We listen, investigate, and understand the social and institutional setting before shaping a response.
Knowledge justice
We widen access to platforms, resources, networks, and opportunities—especially for researchers and voices too often left at the margins.
Rooted and connected
From Strasbourg,
open to the world.
TIDA is rooted in Strasbourg, a city shaped by borders, institutions, memory, and exchange. This location strengthens our commitment to dialogue across disciplines, societies, and regions.
From this point of departure, our network connects knowledge and experience across Europe, the MENA region, and beyond.
“We study society from within its questions—and return with knowledge people can use.”
Continue the journey