About
A decade spent looking at the ground
International Academies of Social Sciences began with a simple conviction: that the questions which decide international outcomes — who controls a mineral, a river, a corridor, a process — are answered in places most institutions never visit, and by people who cannot afford to be named.
The story
Ürümqi, then Lhasa, then London
It started in Ürümqi in 2016. A small privately endowed team set out to count what almost nobody was counting: the minerals, pipelines and rail alignments of the Eurasian interior. That work became the Xinjiang Academy of Social Sciences — audit deposits, follow ore from pit to refined product, watch corridors open and close, and record who captures the value at each step.
Five years later the same method went up onto the plateau. The Tibet Academy of Social Sciences was founded in 2021 to treat that region not as a cultural subject but as a strategic system: the water tower that feeds most of Asia's major rivers, an untested lithium and geothermal province, and one of the most punishing environments any piece of engineering can be asked to survive.
By 2023 the two field records had begun to answer a bigger question than either was built for. The London Academy of Social Sciences opened that year to take it on — emerging powers, technology and statecraft, and whether legal rules hold when the resource at stake is strategic. London reads the field record; the field branches keep it honest.
In July 2026, with the enactment of the Chinese ethnic unity law, both field branches suspended publication and froze their sites the same month. Nothing was deleted. The record from Ürümqi and Lhasa is complete to that date, held in London, and available in full — with every contributor behind a code, permanently.
Principles
How the federation works
Six commitments that govern how the branches work, and what the foundation will not do.
Nobody's instrument
Privately endowed, unaffiliated with any government or party institute, and unconnected to similarly named bodies in Florida or the United Kingdom.
Evidence before advocacy
We publish the measurement and the method together. The strategic argument has to follow from them, not precede them.
Fieldwork is not optional
Remote sensing checks the ground record; it never substitutes for it. Every major finding rests on someone having been there.
Long horizons
Hydrological series, deposit audits and corridor indices are measured in years, and funded accordingly.
Contributors before output
If publishing a finding would expose a researcher, the finding waits. Coded attribution is permanent and has never been reversed.
The record survives
When a branch can no longer publish, its work is preserved, not withdrawn. The archive outlives the institution.
Next
Read the research programme
Eight programmes carry the work, from critical minerals and transboundary water to emerging powers and the rule of law.