The issue captures a shared commitment of ISRF Fellows: to engage real world social problems in original ways. Freedom has long been a central concern of social scientists. In recent years, however, the words ‘resistance’, ‘critique’ and ‘agency’ have often replaced ‘freedom’ in academic discourse. Perhaps this is in part due to a turn away from large-scale thinking and theorizing, and a recognition of the risks and challenges attendant to researching something called ‘freedom’. Nonetheless, contributors to this Bulletin have risen to the challenge and returned ambitiously to the question of freedom.