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| Location | Zurich |
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| Coordinates | 47°22′01″N 8°32′51″E / 47.36681°N 8.54754°E |
| Type | memory institution  |
| Heritage designation | class A Swiss cultural property of national significance |
| Website | www |
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The Swiss Social Archives (German: Schweizerisches Sozialarchiv, French: Archives Sociales Suisse) in Zurich is a historical archive, an academic library, a collection of documentation and a research facility specialising in social issues and social movements.[1] The Swiss Confederation recognizes the archives as the country's leading research facility for social issues and social movements.[2] The Social Archives run their own research endowment fund, the Ellen Rifkin Hill Foundation.[3] The SSA play an important role in communicating scholarship to the broader community. They have convened several exhibitions, published essay collections on Swiss social history and conduct lecture series, presentations and information sessions. The archives work with Swiss secondary and tertiary educational institutions, archives and libraries and with similar institutions abroad.[4][5][6] The SSA are a founding member of the International Association of Labour History Institutions (IALHI).[7]
Run by an independent association funded by the Swiss Confederation, the Canton of Zurich, the City of Zurich and other sources,[8] the archives employ about 20 historians, archivists, and librarians. The SSA's director is Christian Koller.[9][10]
The Swiss Social Archives were founded in 1906 by Paul Pflüger, a social reformer, politician and pastor from the working-class Zurich district of Aussersihl.[11][12] Originally known as the Centre for Switzerland's Social Literature and inspired by the Musée social in Paris, their aim was to document social questions. Early visitors included emigrants from Germany and Russia, notably Lenin and Trotsky.[13] During the interwar period, antifascist refugees from Italy and Germany frequently visited the reading room, and in the 1940s the archives assumed their present name. The reading room became a popular meeting place for Eastern European refugees from the Cold War. In 1974 the Swiss Confederation recognised the archives as a research facility,[14] and ten years later the archives moved to their present home at the Sonnenhof.[15][16][17][18]