Reconstituted in1992, the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities goes back to the Society of Sciences of the Elector of Brandenburg, founded by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in 1700. It follows the tradition of the Academy of Sciences in Berlin, which later, after being named the Prussian Academy of Sciences, achieved fame and recognition. Seventy-eight Nobel laureates have shaped its history. With approximately 200 elected members, all outstanding representatives of their disciplines, the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities is today an international and interdisciplinary society of scholars with headquarters at the Gendarmenmarkt in Berlin.

The Academy's activities focus primarily on conducting research in the humanities, examining future scientific and social issues, as well as encouraging dialogue between scholars and society. Some 30 traditional Academy Projects, such as dictionary projects, special editions, documentations and bibliographies, make it the largest non-university research institute with a profile in the humanities in the region. In its Interdisciplinary Research Groups and Initiatives - unique forms of collaboration for a German academy - topics of great scientific and social significance are explored by Academy members together with external experts and a rising generation of specialists. Their findings are presented to the public in research reports and memoranda. With the journal Gegenworte, the Academy has also succeeded in establishing an exchange of ideas on a high plane between the sciences and society.

In its work, the Academy can currently rely on an international network of cooperation agreements with almost twenty academies of sciences (and arts) on four continents.
Together with the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina, the Academy has founded The Young Academy, the first of its kind to establish the promotion of young German scientists and scholars on an institutional basis.