ICJ - Interview of Edouard Husson

Edouard Husson. Vice chancellor, Paris universities

When you take a look around the world, the best universities for the social sciences and humanities belong to the most dynamic universities. In France, these subjects are undergoing a significant change.

For example, they were well represented in the call for entries in the Investment for the Future programme and the proportion of the projects in the social sciences was exactly the same as for other disciplines. But the big change was at the interdisciplinary level: the humanities and social sciences are now working together with the different sciences.

This is probably the main area for improvement in France, but you can already see some good examples of cooperation in Lyon, Marseille or Paris, three important centres for social sciences and humanities.

They are doing it more and more because this is where the future lies. It is something being asked for by the students as well as the research-professors who would like to increase the scope of their activities. Today you can typically find cooperation on a lot of projects between philosophy and medicine, between economics and law, etc.

We need to multiply such initiatives but this is already the clearest indicator of the renewal of the social sciences and humanities in France.

Traditionally, the social sciences and humanities were prestigious subjects from an international point of view. After the Second World War, a lot of foreign students came to France to take courses from the great masters of philosophy and history. Over the last few years however, foreign students have been attracted to France to study other disciplines. Universities know very well that they have to work on changing this. It will be through interdisciplinary cooperation, on new topics like health, senior dependence and the environment that we will be able to develop really attractive projects. I think that within 5 or 10 years, the social sciences and humanities will again be as prestigious as they once were during the 1960s.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Edourd
• husson
• sorbonne
• paris
• université
• NSB
• ICJ
• edu
• 2011
• Noir
• sur
• blanc