The CISL aims to use computational tools to generate a deeper understanding of institutions, specifically how they emerge, how they are designed and implemented, and how they influence and change behavior. It supports the conceptualization and development of Computational Institutional Science, an emerging stream of social science research that uses computational methods to conduct institutional analysis.

In October 2024, CISL hosted a workshop at the International Centre for Mathematical Sciences in Edinburgh, Scotland. This interdisciplinary event brought together social scientists interested in the formal models of institutions. The workshop introduced participants to category theory, the branch of mathematics interested in abstraction and representation to represent complex things like real-world social systems.