Items features thematic essay collections that explore a broad range of areas of concern, including key terms, concepts, fields, and empirical zones of inquiry; the political economy of social knowledge production; changes in the landscape of higher education and the institutional ecology of social science research; the relationship between social knowledge and its uses; and more.

Before the present iteration of Items, the Council published occasional essay collections that addressed contemporary events and topics through a social science lens. These can now be found archived here alongside ongoing and concluded series.