Welcome to the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies, generally referred to as SALISES. The Institute's history goes back to the early days of the University of the West Indies, with the formation of the Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER) in 1948. ISER was established in advance of the faculty of Social Sciences in order to build a solid foundation of empirical data on the Caribbean region and functioned admirably in this capacity for some fifty years. In 2000, ISER merged with the Consortium Graduate School of the Social Sciences (CGSS), which was a novel, fifteen year- long initiative to train graduate students with an interdisciplinary perspective. SALISES seeks to merge the best research traditions of ISER with the high quality graduate teaching and supervision that was a hallmark of the CGSS.

There is a taught master's programme, with concentrations in Economic Development Policy, Governance and Public Policy and Social Policy.There is also an Mphil/PhD option which offers an initial MPhil option with possible advancement to the PhD based on quality of work accompanied by an oral upgrade examination. SALISES' fellows are engaged in a wide range of individual and group research projects in areas including poverty, local government, children's welfare, regional integration, budgetary policy and social development. In February, 2010 SALISES will launch its flagship research project '50-50' , which will critically review the independence experience in the Commonwealth Caribbean over the past fifty years and make proposals for the possible social, economic and political direction of the region for the next fifty.