Understanding the society in which we live is crucial for being able to act responsibly and with awareness in every field and to grow into professionals who are able to influence across several contexts. To be able to comprehend the complexities of real-word challenges in a society that is in continuous and rapid change, nowadays, even more so than in the past, it is essential to combine different points of view: from the economic viewpoint to law, politics, psychology, sociology and history. 

The educational courses within Università Cattolica's Faculty of Political and Social Sciences are founded upon this belief; they all follow a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary learning approach which becomes, consequently, the Faculty's point of distinction and strength. Interdisciplinary education combines cultural education and invaluable professional preparation. A method aimed at acquiring the ability to interpret the phenomena and to tackle key problems by merging multiple dimensions, able to foster critical thinking and to give graduates a flexible profile open to the development of new skills in their professional future.

Officially, the Faculty is quite young as it was created in 2012 when the faculties of Political Science and Sociology joined forces. Nonetheless, it is a project that has very distant origins and was set up when Università Cattolica was founded in 1921, along with the degree programme in Social Sciences, followed then by the School of Political and Social Sciences (1926) from which, at different times, the Faculties of Political Science (1931) and Sociology (2001) took shape. Now the two faculties are united once again in a project that is both firmly-established and innovative.

Many extraordinary scholars and professors have characterised this long history. Among these we recall: Marcello Boldrini, dean of the Faculty of Political Science from 1935 to 1947, statistician, member of the Lincean Academy and also rector from 1959 to 1989, political scientist and constitutionalist who was particularly dedicated to the themes of institutional reforms and federalism; Alberto Quadrio Curzio, dean of the Faculty of Political Science from 1989 to 2010, economist, academic, president of the Lincean Academy since 2015 and president of the Italian Society of Economists; Michele Colasanto, first dean of the Faculty of Sociology, sociologist and vice-rector, first dean of the Faculty of Sociology, sociologist and vice-rector of Università Cattolica from 1998 to 2002.