In the summer of 1958 early steps to establish the Faculty of Social Sciences were taken by the foundation of the Institute of Social Research and Studies. The Institute recruited postgraduate students to pursue its educational and research goals. What is known today as the Faculty of Social Sciences, emerged in 1958 from the merging of two institutes: The Institute of Social Sciences and The Institute of Cooperation Research.  After the establishment of The Faculty of Social Sciences, the Department of Social Science was renamed as the Department of Sociology. Subsequently the departments of Anthropology, Demography, Social Development Studies, Social Planning, and Communication, and recently Islamic Social Sciences joined the Department of Sociology to form the Faculty of Social Sciences. Having been actively engaged in education and research for five decades, the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Tehran has been able to attest to its position as the most renowned higher education entity in the field of social and communication science in Iran and in conducting immense qualitative as well as quantitative research.

Since its foundation, the Faculty of Social Sciences has had the following missions and ambitions:

• Producing knowledge and building theories in various fields of the Social Sciences
• Training and educating students and academic leaders
• Conducting studies and researches on social issues, conditions, and structures, for the purpose of sharing the results with responsible and relevant state and civil society organizations, research institutions, as well as interested individuals through joint collaborations, journals, seminars and conferences