Created in 2011 by sociologist Michel Wieviorka and directed by economist Olivier Boiun, the College is an intellectual space for pluridisciplinary projects. It has three axes of research:

• New norms and institutions
• Practices of living together
• Subjectivities : production and knowledge

The College has 18 chairs, 25 associate researchers, and 17 postdoctoral students Chairs cover topics such as “Global Anthropology of Luxury,” “Ecology, Work and Emplyment,” “ Exile and Migrations,” “Rethinking Social Justice,” or “Global South(s).” Chairs choose how they want to work whether by organizing seminars, roundatbles, colloquiums, conferences, or workshops. The College publishes working papers and has a video channel.

The Chair “Global South (s),” held by Françoise Vergès since September 2014, does not conceive the “South” as a geographical notion but as spatialities and temporalities created by the global liberal market, by the Nation-State, or by regional institutions. In these “souths,” populations experienced discriminations (ethnic, gender, economic, cultural, linguistic, social). Artists and scholars (mostly from the Global South) have been in residence – for instance, Vietnamese film director, feminist theorist and writer, Trinh Minh-ha or artist Antariska, based in Yogyakarta, creator of the cultural center Kunci.

Françoise Vergès has developed three axes: worlds of slavery, postcoloniality and care, and L’Atelier, a workshop bringing together around 35/40 artists, activists and scholars for a collaborative practice. During two days, the group works together to produce a performance or an exhibit. Videos of L’Atelier are online.

The methodology of conferences, symposiums or workshop by Global South(s) is deliberately collaborative, based on short contributions to facilitate conversations, held in different places – seminar rooms, forest, river, cafés – to encourage the unforeseen and the unexpected, and opened to expressions such as poetry, danse, photopgraphy, performance, reading, cooking.

Françoise Vergès