IAS of Nantes
5, Allée Jacques Berque - BP 12105
44021Nantes Cedex 1
FRANCE
Presentation
Like all Institutes for Advanced Studies the primary mission of the Nantes Institute is to assist scholars in their intellectual creativity and to help them bring their innovative projects to a successful conclusion. Applications from all candidates are welcome, no discipline or subject being banned.
The main ambition of the Nantes Institute for Advanced Studies is to widen studies and human sciences to views different than those expressed by the Western academics. Instead of considering other major civilisations as mere subject of study or objectives for missionaries, the Institute aspires to create a new style of intellectual relationship between the countries of the ‘north’ and ‘south’.The so-called "developed" countries (very roughly the countries of North America, Europe, Australia and Japan) have until recently dominated the social sciences, treating "the rest" of the world - that is, 85% of the world’s population today - more as objects of inquiry or as students than as real partners. Even today the vast majority of researchers invited to "Northern" conferences or universities come from the North, while "Southern" academics are welcomed in significant numbers only in the context of area studies. This tendency will ultimately lock the social sciences into a self-referential loop with the illusory belief that their categories of thought are universal and timeless.
While some exceptional scholars of course went their own way (we are thinking of people like Jacques Berque or Marcel Griaule), this was and still is the general trend. At the most we acknowledge nowadays that these civilisations possess aesthetic or philosophical "resources" which we can appropriate just as we do mined or botanical ones, or else that these should be consigned to museums to save them from extinction.
The goal of the Nantes IAS is different. It implies that the small academic community that will gather every year at the Institute must be composed of scholars with widely differing intellectual and cultural baggage but who share the same type of perplexity and whose projects have enough elements in common. However, research projects do not themselves have to have a "North-South" dimension. To take an example from our first year of Fellows: we welcomed a European historian working on Europe, who felt that Europe could be better understood by working alongside Southern colleagues who could view the subject from the outside.
Living and working under the same roof for several months enables the residents of the Institute to confront the way they perceive issues that thanks to globalisation are common to everyone. The Institute aims to become a place of mutual learning and a breeding-ground for lasting ties and collaborations between intellectuals and artists from all continents, thus helping to fight unilateralism that leads scholars from the southern hemisphere to adopt northern values and methods.
organisation
The legal structure of a foundation, defined by French law as "the irrevocable allocation of properties, rights or resources for the performance of a non-profit making activity for the public benefit", is the most appropriate structure to the objectives of an Institute for Advanced Studies since it guarantees its scientific and financial independence.
The foundation "Nantes Institute for Advanced Studies" will be led by a Board of Trustees including some of its sponsors, Nantes Métropole, Veolia Eau and Nantes University. The Academic Advisory Board evaluates the policy of invitation of the Institute as well as the broad themes of reseach agreed upon in consultation with its Director, with the assistance of a network of correspondents. Finally, the staff of the Institute implement the scientific policy and prepare for the arrival of the fellows.
The Board of Trustees draws and evaluates the scientific policy of the Institute with the help of the Scientific Advisory Board. The Board of Trustees supervises the management of private and public funds awarded for the functioning of the Institute.
Composition of the Board of Trustees:
The founding members:
- Jean-Marc Ayrault , Deputy at the French Parliament, Mayor of the City of Nantes, President of Nantes Metropole, President of the Nantes IAS Foundation.
- Joseph Deniaud , CEO Harmonie Mutualité.
- Antoine Frérot, General Director, Veolia Eau.
- Pierre Victoria, Deputy Director of the Sustainable Development Department, Veolia Environnement.
The institutional members:
- Institut National des Sciences de l’Homme et de la Société (CNRS).
- Yves Lecointe, President of the University of Nantes.
The coopted members:
- Katharina Biegger, General Secretary Deputy, Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (Germany).
- Marie-Claire Certiat, Engineer, Managing Director, EADS Foundation (France).
- Pierre Legendre, Emeritus Professor, University Paris I (Panthéon-Sorbonne), Honorary Research Director, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (EPHE), Ve section, Paris.
- Helga Nowotny , President of the European Research Council, Emeritus Professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETHZ).
- Yves Saint-Geours, France Ambassador in Brasil, Vice-President of the Nantes IAS board of Trustees.
- Arnaud Teyssier, Associate Professor University Paris I (Panthéon-Sorbonne)
Consultative members :
- Françoise Thibault, Ministry of Research.
- Alain Supiot, Professor, University of Nantes, Director of the Nantes IAS.
- Jean-Noël Robert, Research Director at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, President of the Nantes IAS scientific advisory board.
- Samuel Jubé, General Secretary, Nantes IAS.
- Joachim Nettelbeck, General Secretary, Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, Special adviser to the President of the Board of Trustees.
- Vincent Reina, Developement acting manager, Suez Environnement, Chairman of the Nantes IAS Sponsors Committee.
The role of the Scientific Advisory Board is to evaluate the Institute’s activities and actively participate in the definition of its strategic orientation. This board meets twice a year in order to establish the list of candidates selected for a stay in the Nantes Institute for Advanced Studies, in consultation with the director. Besides these meetings, the members of the Scientific Advisory Board are invited to disseminate information about the Institute, recommend researchers that should be invited, and regularly provide their opinion to the director.
In the long run, the Scientific Advisory Board of the Institute will include 12 members designated by the Board of Trustees, under recommendation of the director, to serve on a three years basis. Currently, the scientific advisory board includes the following members :
- Fehti Benslama, Professor at Paris VII University, Director of Clinical Human Sciences Department, France/Tunisia.
- Alain Desrosières, Civil Servant at the French Stratistics Central Agency (INSEE), Member of the Alexandre Koiré’s Research Center for History of Sciences (EHESS, Paris).
- Bernard Flusin, Professor at university Paris IV, Directo of studies EPHE
- Hartmut Kaelble, Professor at the Institute for History Sciences, Humbold University, Berlin, Germany.
- Sunil Khilnani, Professor of Politics, Director King’s India Institute, King’s College London, G.B.
- Ota de Leonardis, Professor of sociology at the University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy.
- Danouta Liberski-Bagnoud, Ethnologist, CNRS
- Charles Malamoud, Eminent Director of Indian religions’ Studies, Practical School of High Studies, France.
- Annie Montaut, Professor of Hindi/Indian and general linguistics at the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations, France.
- Jean-Noel Robert, Director of Japanese Studies, Practical School of High Studies, France.
- Ousmane Sidibe, Professor of Law at the University of Bamako, Mali.
- Franciscus Verellen, Director of the French Far East Institute (EFEO), "History of Taoïsm" Fellowship, France.
Chairman: Jean-Noël Robert
Correspondent members:
This network aims at promoting the Institute in various scientific groups and countries. The correspondent can suggest possible candidates and they participate as experts in the selection procedure. They are entitled to use the Institute facilities for short stays.
The members of the network are:
- David Annoussamy, Honorary Judge, Member of the Over-seas Academy of Sciences, India.
- Robert Aronowitz, M.D. Associate Professor of History and Sociology of Science, Pennsylvania University, USA
- Balveer Arora, Professor of Political Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India.
- Sudhir Chandra, Professor of comtenporary history, Mizoram University, Aizawl, India
- Roger Chartier, Professor of History at Collège de France.
- Françoise Choay, Eminent Professor of Philosophy and Urbanism, Universities of Paris VIII and Cornell, France and USA.
- Benoît de CORNULIER, Linguistics / French language and literature, Professor at the University of Nantes (France)
- Mamadou Diawara, Professor of History, Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
- Augustin Emane, Maître de conférence School of Law, Nantes, France.
- Suren Erkman, Director of the Institute for Communication and Analysis of Science and Technologies (ICAST), Geneva, Switzerland.
- Claude Evin, former minister of Social Affairs and Medicine, Associate Professor, Nantes University, France.
- Etienne François, Professor of History, Freie Universität (Berlin, Germany), and Paris-I (France).
- Cornelia Isler-Kerényi, Archaeologist, Switzerland.
- Shigehisa Kuriyama, Professor of Science History, Harvard University, USA.
- Grahame Lock, Professor of Political Theory and Philosophy, University of Nijmegen and Leiden, The Netherlands.
- Anne-Marie Moulin, Doctor and science historian, Research Director, Institute for Development (IRD), Egypt/France.
- Martin Ndende, Professor of Law, Nantes University, France.
- Osamu Nishitani, Philosopher, Professor, Foreign Languages University of Tokyo (Japan)
- Clemens Pornschlegel, Professor of German Literature, Munich University, Germany.
- Michael Power , Professor of Economics, London School of Economics and Science (LSE), UK.
- Joseph Tonda, Professor of Sociology, Libreville University, Gabon.
- Arild Utaker, Professor of Philosophy, Bergen University, Norway.
- Alain Wijffels, Law Historian, Research Director, CNRS, France and Belgium.
† Altan Gokalp, Anthropologist, Director of Research, CNRS, France.
† Jean-Baptiste Butat, Doctor, France.
† Michel Cartry, Ethnologist and Africanist, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (EPHE), Paris, France.
The Institute is headed by its Director, Alain Supiot, with the help of a scientific advisor, Ali El Kenz, and Soizic Lorvellec, special advisor of specific missions.
Samuel Jubé is the General Secretary, assisted by Aspasia Nanaki, General Secretary Deputy, Marie-Pierre Jousse, General Secretary assistant, Elisabeth Toublanc, Alain Supiot personal assistant and head of the logistics team; Beatrice Dantec, head of accountability office, Hugues Roger, welcome assistant and communication assistant, Dimitri Bastard, technician, Anne-Christine Graziotin, receptionist and Ramona Bunduc, cleaning agent.
The services of documentation and information technology are shared with the Ange Guépin House of Humanities under the responsibility of Véronique Cohoner and Constance Cournède (documentation) and François Vincent (information technology).
The Institute’s management relies on a network of referees who provide their help in the field of scientific policies.
invitation
The Nantes IAS’s premise is that in the human sciences researcher and object are never wholly separable. Due to this particular epistemological status, comparative study and the other’s vision of our own culture and modes of thought are considered an indispensable ingredient of something like objectivity in our knowledge of the human being. On our own small scale, the Institute accordingly seeks to break with the unilateralism of enlightened North and benighted South to create the conditions for Northern and Southern researchers really to learn from each other, based on reciprocity.
The epistemological premise of the Institute and its aim of encouraging a new type of intellectual encounter between academics from the North and the South is linked to another feature of the research policy of the Nantes IAS, namely that it privileges research into the dogmatic underpinnings of human societies, that is, into what in the meaning which a society assigns to human life lies beyond proof.
Neither man nor society would be able to maintain themselves without resorting to some founding beliefs that escape all attempts to experimental demonstration and sustain their manners and actions. This dogmatic dimension of human life is particularly seen at work in languages, law, religion and aesthetics, whose common feature is to establish meaning - meaning that exists per se and cannot be demonstrated. Rejecting the notion of dogma is characteristic of human sciences and derives from their own approach to dogma. As they postulate the possibility for man to become fully understandable to himself, they are led to equate reason with science and to uphold the scientistic lowering of man to the state of an entity that can be fully explained and perfectly managed. The scientific policy of the IEA aims at helping scientists from all continents to consider dogmatic systems from a totally different angle. Indeed, those systems should not be considered as the remains of a former, irrational age in a world doomed to becoming transparent and manageable but as a framework that is necessary to the establishment of reason in a world that is bound to remain diverse and unpredictable.
To become a resident : click here
Accomodation
The Institute for Advanced Studies wishes to provide to the invited residents a high quality of services in terms of hosting and surrounding environment in order to enable them focusing on their research project. The headquarters of Nantes Institute for Advanced Studies are located down town, at a distance of 200 meters from the TGV station where trains reach Paris in two hours. These headquarters will group together the Institute for Advanced Studies and the Ange Guépin House of Humanities allowing thus invited researchers to establish fluid contacts with the academic community of Nantes.
The specific space allocated to the Institute for Advanced Studies includes 22 equipped offices for researchers, the offices of the management team, as well as a lobby-restaurant with a covered roof, and an open garden over the Loire river. Common space with Ange Guépin House of Humanities includes the documentation resource center, a lecture hall with a capacity of 100 seats, meeting rooms, information technology offices and a cafeteria.
The Institute for Advanced Studies also has at its disposal some twenty flats (ranging from studios to 4 rooms) totally furnished and equipped. These flats will be at the disposal of the Institute’s fellows according to the length of their stay and the size of their family. This place of residency, adjacent to the research space, includes a living room, a common kitchen, and a laundry room.
Fellows gather thurdays for the weekly seminars.
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