There are different study centers, institutes, observatories, and research groups, connecting academia with research on public issues. The most relevant of which are:
Centre for the Humanities
This Centre is a space for exchanging ideas between academia and different cultural players. Its mission is to strengthen the public aspect of cultural thought and critic through research programs, undergraduate teaching and continuous education, outreach activities, publisher’s collections, participation in the public debate, and fostering the academic cooperation of similar initiatives.
Centre for Human Rights
This Centre is committed to raising awareness about human rights violations and searching for institutional answers. To uphold this commitment, the Centre prepares technical reports and studies. It also fosters the active role of the legal community and civil society, seeking to strengthen control over public policies and the State’s transparency. The Centre also provides legal advice to vulnerable groups at its legal Clinic, where students and scholars offer legal support to the community.
Centre for Comparative Policies in Education (CPCE -Spanish acronym)
Through the generation and transmission of knowledge and technical information, this Centre contributes to the analysis, design, application, and evaluation of educational policies. Furthermore, it actively engages in the public debate and collaborates with national and international teaching and research networks.
Centre for Studies on Conflict and Social Cohesion
This Centre conducts collaborative research on the analysis of the multiple manifestations of social conflict in Chile, its causes, and its cultural and historical contexts.
Inequality Observatory
This platform analyzes how liberal democracies have addressed grievances from organized groups of society. The importance of this observatory lies in the public impact of studying more egalitarian, socially fair, and environmentally sustainable ways of organizing community life. Therefore, it works directly with the academic world and civil society.
Government and Public Innovation Observatory
This observatory was established to meet the need for contributing to the discussion on public policies from the standpoint of applied academic research, through connections to different State institutions and organizations of civil society. The observatory is, at the same time, an educational space for undergraduate and graduate students through their participation as assistants, trainees, and while working on their theses.
Program for Psychosocial Studies in the Workplace (PEPET)
Through different approaches to research, teaching, outreach, and services, the PEPET seeks to contribute to creating healthy workplaces, respectful of worker rights, based on management and production models that guarantee both the increase of efficiency and productivity, as well as subjective well-being, health, and dialogue and participation opportunities for workers.
City and Territory Laboratory
The laboratory experiments with new methodologies and discipline approaches, providing new creative and innovative tools for decision-making about the city and territory from an economical and environmentally sustainable social perspective.