The Department of Political and Social Sciences pursues a determinedly interdisciplinary approach to research and cooperates with a multitude of fields and institutions both within and outside the Freie Universität Berlin.

The scientific profile of the Freie Universität Berlin is currently represented by nine knowledge alliances which are dedicated to defining essential multi-level issues and concentrating the interdisciplinary research activities in their respective scope. The research spectrum of the Department of Political and Social Sciences is associated with six of these knowledge alliances, with "Cultural Dynamics", "Transregional Relations", "Educational Processes and Results", "Human-Environmental Interactions", "In-Security – Security Research", and "Health and Quality of Life".

The Department of Political and Social Sciences is also involved in the Berlin University Alliance, an endeavour in which the Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Technische Universität Berlin and Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin joined forces to create an integrated research environment. Representatives of the Department play active roles in the Steering Committee, as principal investigators and as collaborating researchers.

In addition to that, scholars of the Department of Political and Social Sciences collaborate very closely with representatives of other academic institutions in the Berlin research landscape, be it in the numerous joint research projects, in teaching or in the supervision of junior researchers. Cooperation agreements have been sealed, among others, with the Berlin Social Science Center (WZB), German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin) and Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient.