Doctoral schools
PhD students of the UMR are attached to one of the following three doctoral schools.
L’École doctorale Sciences des sociétés
The Doctoral School 624 “Sciences of Societies” is a multi-disciplinary school for research into the world’s multi-polar spatialities and plural temporalities. Within its sixteen laboratories, it coordinates the work of around 150 HDR teacher-researchers who supervise the work in anthropology, architecture, economics, geography, history and civilizations, political philosophy and sociology of approximately 300 PhD students. Research is guided by a critical spirit that does not dissociate epistemic problems from social practices, nor the latter from their environmental and political contexts.
Four key cross-disciplinary themes underpin the interfaces and intersections between the work carried out here:
- The international dimension and comparatism
- Social construction of identities and otherness over the long term
- Relations between natural phenomena and societies
- Conceptual and methodological innovation in the human and social sciences.
The Doctoral School is organized into two departments:
- Department 1 groups together eight laboratories: CANTHEL, CEPED, CERLIS, Cermes3, LCSP, PHILéPOL, URMIS, Laboratoire Anthropologie et Écologie de l’Émergence des Maladies (Anthropology and Ecology of Disease Emergence Laboratory)
Director: Véronique PETIT
Administrative Manager: Jérôme BROCHERIOU - Department 2 comprises eight laboratories: </strong ANHIMA, CESSMA, EVCAU, Géographie-cités, ICT, LADYSS, LIED, PRODIG
Director: Antoine REBÉRIOUX
Administrative Manager: Sarah RAHMANI
The School is also characterized by its global outlook, given all cultural areas in the African, American, Asian, Oceanic and European domains are represented. Its scope is diachronic; studies on the present, focused on a critical understanding of the contemporary world in all its components, are placed in resonance with the long history of societies and civilizations.
As a cross-disciplinary forum for communication and a locus for joint research, the School and each of its departments aim to supplement the relationships that doctoral students have with their thesis supervisor, their co-supervisor in France or abroad (in the case of cotutelle) or their individualized follow-up committee, and the supervision provided by the teams of the laboratories to which they belong. The School provides a favorable framework for doctoral students’ activities. Indeed, this institution is fundamentally designed as a place for experimentation and collaboration and for training for and through research; there is an openness to diverse modes of investigation and demonstration, and a lively dialectic between extreme specialization and the confrontation of scientific and critical approaches. Working on “your” subject in contact with others, in dialogue and exchange with other researchers, multiplies your chances of understanding the political, social, economic, and intellectual issues that you yourself are faced with. This is the premise, or the evidence, on which the Sciences of Societies Doctoral School’s activities are based.
ED 624 Sciences of Societies presentation brochure—academic year 2023/2024
L’École doctorale de l’EHESS
The EHESS Doctoral School (ED 286) is a multi-disciplinary social science program that brings together 1,300 doctoral students and leads to the defense of 200 theses each year. This doctoral school is highly international: 50% of doctoral students are international, and 200 doctorates are under cotutelle. The school is supported by some thirty bilateral agreements and sixty Erasmus agreements and around 150 foreign professors are invited to teach at EHESS every year.
Founded on an ongoing interdisciplinary dialogue between history, sociology, anthropology, economics, philosophy, geography, literary studies, arts, and cognitive sciences, the doctoral school of the EHESS comprises eleven doctoral programs, several of which are thematic. This is the case of the “Territories, Migrations and Development” program, which welcomes most of the Geographie-cités doctoral students enrolled at EHESS.
The EHESS Doctoral School is supported by 40 research units, 37 of which are shared with the CNRS or other major institutions, and a dozen or so are specialized in major cultural areas. The heart of the program lies in the more than 500 research seminars and numerous methodological courses that enable students to follow a “tailor-made” doctoral path.
L’École doctorale de géographie de Paris (EDGP)
The École doctorale de géographie de Paris (EDGP) is the only geography doctoral school in France, but it also welcomes supervisors and doctoral students in sociology and geography. The EDGP is accredited by two higher education establishments: the University of Paris 1 PanthéonSorbonne and Sorbonne Université. It has also established a partnership with the Institut national d’études démorgraphiques (INED). The EDGP has 90 research directors and 200 doctoral students. It is headquartered at the Institut de Géographie de Paris.
The EDGP is supported by 12 research units and two INED teams in geography, planning, and urban development, as well as demography and sociology. The School is strongly engaged in the thematic renewal of the disciplines represented, while also mobilizing and disseminating a great deal of practical knowledge in territorial planning, development, and management.
EDGP is open to European and international research networks. It encourages bilateral doctoral enrollment (cotutelle) with foreign institutions. Its current research axes and programs are grouped into five main themes: environment and risks, spatial systems, urban planning and development, territories and identities, and disciplinary methods and tools.
