The Academy, through its international activities and agreements, promotes scholarly cooperation, facilitates intellectual and scholarly exchanges by Australian social scientists with academic counterparts overseas, and permits the ASSA to act as an Australian national member of international organisations concerned with the social sciences.
ASSA's outreach program engages individuals, groups and institutions not normally associated with the Academy and which might benefit from contributions of social scientists. The Academy developed and continues in partnerships to support the ASSA Indigenous Summer School and Mentoring Program. ASSA supports public lectures and responds to invitations from foreign embassies, community groups and industry.
The Policy and Advocacy Program encourages the participations of Fellows and social scientist in engaging in debate, research or other activities that advocate and highlight the importance of the social sciences in providing data, advice, and direction for policy development by government. The social science community is encouraged to accept this invitation to be heard on important issues and to contribute strongly and with effect.
Each year, in conjunction with the ASSA Annual General Meeting, the Academy hosts its major event, the Annual Symposium - coupled with the Academy's annual public lectures, the Cunningham Lectures.
The Research Program, overseen by the Research Committee, encourages collaboration across the range of the social science disciplines and ensures that leading edge research projects are endorsed by the Fellowship and, where possible, represent a cross section of specialist knowledge and participation from the disciplines.
The Workshop Program is a principal component of the Academy's promotion of excellence in research in the social sciences. In its nine years of operation, it has staged 50 workshops and published many books arising from these. It aims to identify issues of national concern in the social sciences, and to focus specialist attention on them by means of workshops and roundtables.