Neuroscience is said to be changing how human behaviour is understood, how society is organized, how public policy is justified, and how lawmakers administer justice (Gazzaniga 2009). For some, neuroscientists are fast becoming the new experts in the management of human nature and behaviour (Rose and Abi-Rached 2013). This growing influence has helped to grow collaboration between social scientists, humanities scholars, and neuroscientists (Callard and Margulies, 2011; Roepstorff and Frith, 2012), which have proven capable of deepening our understanding of human life and behaviour (Malabou 2012). However, as the recent European Science Foundation (ESF) report, “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” (2013) shows, demand and interest in integrating social scientists into domains traditionally occupied by the life sciences is strong, but the infrastructure to foster it is weak.

Unsurprisingly, then, outstanding interdisciplinary social scientific research on the relations of neuro-scientific research, brain and society is in rather short supply. Three of the main reasons are: 1) There is no interdisciplinary network in Europe or beyond with scholars and policymakers exploring the practical and theoretical implications of neuroscience for individuals and society; 1) Knowledge and understanding of how interdisciplinary collaboration can or should be done, or what makes it successful or not, remains limited; and 3) There is no mechanism in Europe or beyond building the capacity of social scientists to become skilled in the interdisciplinary study of ‘brain and society’.