The Institute of African Worlds (IMAF)

The Institute of African Worlds (IMAF) is a joint interdisciplinary research unit (ancient and contemporary history, anthropology, political science, archaeology) whose work focuses on Africa, both north and south of the Sahara, and on its diasporas throughout the world. A laboratory that brings together researchers around a cultural area, IMAF is made up for the vast majority of anthropologists and historians. It was created on January 1, 2014, through the merger of three laboratories: the Center for African World Studies (CEMAf), the Center for African Studies (CEAf), and the Center for the Social History of Mediterranean Islam (CHSIM).

The Institute of African Worlds (IMAF) was born on January 1, 2014 from the merger of three laboratories: the Center for African Worlds Studies (CEMAf), the Center for African Studies (CEAf), and the Center for the Social History of Mediterranean Islam (CHSIM).

It was established on four sites (Aix-en-Provence, Ivry-sur-Seine, rue Malher (Paris IVe) and bd Raspail (Paris VIe), until the consolidation of the three sites in the Paris region on the Condorcet campus (Aubervilliers) in September 2019.

Research

It is a joint interdisciplinary research unit (history, art history, anthropology, political science, history of law, archaeology, geography) whose research on the entire African continent or its diasporas is organized around six axes:

• Production and circulation of knowledge
• Political economies and African globalization in the long term
• Powers, spaces, temporalities and uses of the past
• The spaces of religion: genealogies, textualities, materialities
• Art, a political object
• Gender, bodies, subjectivities

Tutelage

IMAF is under the authority of the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS – UMR 8171), the Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD – UMR 243), the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), the École pratique des hautes études (EPHE), the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, and the Aix-Marseille Université (AMU).

Staff

• 28 CNRS researchers
• 8 IRD researchers
• 3 emeritus CNRS researchers
• 25 research professors
• 4 emeritus research professors
• 4 ITA CNRS
• 5 BIATTS
• 28 retired researchers and teacher-researchers
• 23 affiliated researchers
• 9 post-doctoral students
• 13 young PhDs
• 58 associate researchers and teacher-researchers

UMR D&S

The Joint Research Unit D&S (Development and Societies) was created in 2008 and is a social science research unit under the aegis of the French Institute for Research on Development (IRD) and the University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.

The UMR D&S is a multidisciplinary unit that brings together anthropologists (2), sociologists (4), a political scientist (1), economists (4), a historian (1) and geographers (3).

HEADCOUNT

In January 2021, the UMR D&S comprised:

• 5 researchers and 10 lecturers or professors
• 1 research engineer
• 1 support staff
• 23 doctoral students
• 2 post-doctoral students
• 35 associate researchers

AIMS

The UMR D&S is dedicated to the multidimensional study of actions carried out in the name of development (plans, policies, devices) and their interactions with societies and territories, from the local to the global, also taking into account the transnational dimension. Considered as a socio-political and economic project, development is the object of a critical, comparative and historical analysis of discourses, norms, frameworks for action, as well as practices. Societies in the South are also analyzed as such, in their own internal dynamics.

The research carried out focuses in particular on the construction of inequalities and multifaceted vulnerabilities, their reproduction and their different uses by a set of social and political institutions (families, communities, networks, States, international solidarity actors) in contexts at risk or marked by a resurgence of social and political tensions, due to constrained aspirations. The UMR also focuses on political conflicts and their multi-scalar configurations (polarization, social movements, resistance, land and resource pressures).

This research is implemented in different contexts (particularly in Latin America, West Africa, the Mediterranean, and Asia (Cambodia, India, China, etc.) using quantitative and qualitative methodologies by a team of researchers and teacher-researchers from various disciplines (geography, history, economics, political science, sociology, anthropology).

The UMR has built up a solid network of partnerships: academic and institutional partnerships in the North and South; with the Centre d’Études de la Coopération Internationale et du Développement (CECID) of the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) – Belgium, with the School of International Development and Globalization (EDIM) of the University of Ottawa – Canada, with the École Nationale Supérieure de Statistique et d’Économie Appliquée (ENSEA) of Abidjan – Côte d’Ivoire, with the Nutriset Group – France, with the General Lansana Konté University of Sonfonia Conakry – Guinea, with the Hassan II University of Casablanca, with the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar) and with the University of São Paulo (USP) – Brazil. In terms of our international locations, Frédéric Bourdier has been based at the French Institute of Pondicherry (IFP) in India and Mohamed Ali Marouani is currently in Tunis as the IRD-CIRAD representative in Tunisia, where he is also leading one of the new Master 2 double degree courses in Development Studies at the Franco-Tunisian University for Africa and the Mediterranean (UFTAM), co-founded by the University of Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne.

RESEARCH AND TRAINING

In addition to this research, there are also research training activities. The UMR D&S maintains close links with the IEDES (Institut d’Etudes du Développement de la Sorbonne) and its members lead a teaching unit called “research dominant” within the Master 2 offered by the institute.

CREDA

The Centre for Research and Documentation on the Americas is a Joint Research Unit (UMR 7227) under the double supervision of the Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3 University and the CNRS and is a part of the CREDAL (Centre for Research and Documentation on Latin America), founded in 1968.

CREDA is a basic research unit in the social sciences specialised in the Americas, working mainly under Section 39 of the CNRS. Its main aims are to renew knowledge of the Americas and to develop social sciences through the confrontation of non-European fields – especially countries of the South – interdisciplinarity and exchanges with international researchers. The systematic accumulation of scientific knowledge on the Americas, thanks to the library of Pierre Monbeig and its outreach through IHEAL publishing, have led to a renewal of research topics and methods in order to develop our approach to social sciences.

PALOC

PALOC, “Local Heritage, Environment and Globalisation” is a multidisciplinary Joint Research Unit (UMR 208) in human and social sciences (anthropologists, archaeologists, ecologists, geographers, curators, botanists, historians, lawyers, surveyors), under the supervision of the French Institute for Research on Development (IRD) and the French National Museum of Natural History (MNHN). Its main campus is located in the Jardin des Plantes (5th arrondissement of Paris).

Its main partners and field offices are located in the Mediterranean, in Eastern and Western Africa, in Asia (India and South-East Asia) and in America (mainly Brazil and Mexico).

HEADCOUNT

In January 2020, PALOC comprised 50 members:

• 34 IRD researchers
• 8 MNHN lecturers or professors
• 4 technical support staff
• 4 post-doctoral students
• An invited partner unit
• Around 50 researchers are associates

AIMS

In a challenging global context of ecological and climate crisis, PALOC researchers study the transformation of relationships between societies and their environments, by using a set of complementary concepts and approaches. Heritagisation – whether linked to biodiversity, associated knowledge, territories, etc. – is taken as a starting point to question governance, transmission, commons, regimes of rights to biodiversity and/or the environment), land tenures and knowledge processes from different perspectives.

Conceived as a notion and a mode of action, heritagisation constitutes an object of research to understand, evaluate, accompany and anticipate the transformations taking place in a globalised world. Studies start out from the local logics of actors and institutions, resonating with the national and international bodies, and focus on the interlinking scales in heritage processes; they are attentive to their social, cultural, environmental, legal and political repercussions. The whole contributes to a collective reflection on collaborative and participatory approaches and research.

The scientific aims in the medium term are to: (i) enable a better understanding of the effects of current environmental changes, especially by questioning the notions of transition, vulnerability and resilience in their own spatial and temporal areas, and analysing their socio-political processes and cultural transmission (especially knowledge of biodiversity through the confrontation and hybridisation of local and scientific knowledge); (ii) reinforcing awareness in research programmes of the increasingly intense global environmental crisis, and consolidating the participation of human and social sciences through international platforms (IPBES, UICN); (iii) continuing and developing an ethical reflection on the topic of rights to biodiversity and the related knowledge, especially surrounding the Nagoya Protocol and its integration into research practice; and (iv) making sure that research programme results are delivered and taken up by public institutions and local populations.

The methodological approaches developed by PALOC take account of local stakeholders, of the interweaving scales involved in heritage dynamics, as well as their social, cultural, environmental, legal and political repercussions. They feed into a collective reflection on approaches, and collaborative and participatory research. PALOC research is co-constructed and its modes of delivery are of interest to all the stakeholders involved in the process of heritagisation creation in the North and the South: local communities, regional and national administrative bodies, international bodies, NGOs, private stakeholders, etc.

PALOC is constructed around three scientific strands (Emergence, Appropriation and Uses of Heritage; Globalised Societies and the Environment; Knowledge, Collections and Movement) and transversal work including practical activities (workshops, seminars, reading workshops), teaching and supervision (summer school, Master’s 1 and 2 internships, support for doctoral student research).

REASEARCH AND TRAINING

The members of PALOC are fully committed to the training of students from undergraduate level L2 at Sorbonne Universities, minor pathway, module in “Local Heritage” and L3 at Sorbonne Universities, minor pathway, module in ‘GIS (Geographic information system)”; the Master’s degree in “Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolution” (BEE) at MNHN with the steering and teaching of the pathway Museology of Natural and Human Sciences (MSNH); participation in modules of the Society and Biodiversity pathway (SeB); and teaching at the ED227 MNHN-UPMC Doctoral School in “Sciences of Nature and Man: evolution and ecology”. PALOC is a unit which hosts students on the BEE Master’s and doctoral students at the ED227 Doctoral School. The Unit is also committed to providing training during summer schools and seminars in France and in the Global South.

SeDyL

The SeDyL Joint Research Unit (Language Dynamics and Structure) is a research and training centre in language sciences under the supervision of the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), the French Institute for Research on Development (IRD) and the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO).

SeDyL was formed in 2010 by the merger of the CELIA (Centre d’Etude des Langues Indigènes d’Amérique, UMR 8133, founded in 1973) and the Linguistic Circle of INALCO, founded in 1994.

Headcount

The SeDyL comprises around 45 members, including:

• 8 researchers including 2 Emeritus researchers,
• 15 lecturers or professors including 2 Emeritus professors,
• 3 technical support staff,
• 2 members on fixed-term contracts,
• 4 post-doctoral students and 11 doctoral students.

Aims

The scientific aims of SeDyL are:

• to compile first-hand linguistic resources through field work and the collection of corpora,
• to deepen our knowledge of the functioning of the languages of the world and language practices as social practices,
• to discuss the challenges of multilingual societies: language policies (within the fields of education and health), endangered languages and language standardisation, languages and migration.

SeDyL focuses on four fields of expertise:

1) the description, documentation and grammaticalisation of world languages;

2) the study of language contacts, linguistic variations and change;

3) linguistic and regional typologies;

4) the study of multilingualism in different contexts (school, health, migration) leading to the critical analysis of linguistic policies.

SeDyL stands out for two major specialisations:

-the joint treatment of less widespread – or even undescribed – languages and languages with an academic tradition, which has led to an abundance of work. This joint approach is adopted as a positioning in order to reach beyond certain purely typological approaches and is central to the editorial line of the unit’s Faits de Langues journal.

– the inclusion at the heart of our scientific projects of a close involvement with the field and the “Global South” countries, where the unit is an important scientific actor cooperating with other scientific bodies in knowledge transfer and dissemination. This specific epistemological positioning is central to our experience of the Global South as the IRD’s only unit in language sciences.

SeDyL has its place in the national and international landscape in two complementary fields:

– the field of the linguistics of language diversity: the unit is a member of the TUL Federation made up of eleven research units nationally, and the EFL LABEX which is formed of eleven Parisian units within the SPC. It also partners regularly with research centres in Germany and the Netherlands (Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Universities of Leiden and Amsterdam), or in the United Kingdom (Manchester, SOAS and King’s College London).

– in the field of research in social sciences of the Global South: the unit is a member of the F3S Federation and is the leader of Package 2 of the LMI MESO. It regularly forms partnerships with universities of the Global South (CIESAS in Mexico, URBA in Cambodia, UNB in Brazil), and is part of a network of research centres specialised in the field of multilingualism in the Global South (MultiLing in Oslo, Centre for Research on Bilingualism in Stockholm), through the Southern Multilingualism and Diversities consortium.

Research and training

Alongside its central role of knowledge production, as demonstrated by the many publications and the two journals it produces (Amerindia and Faits de Langue), as well as the research outputs (such as the production of corpora, methods or platforms), SeDyL makes sure that society benefits from its work through cooperation (bi-national projects or implication of the communities on which the research is based) or promotion (science and society debates, scientific outreach, translations), as well as training.

SeDyL is also highly committed to training language sciences students in Paris, from bachelor’s to doctoral levels. Our Master’s degrees – especially the INALCO-Paris 3 dual-degree – are an introduction to research practices within our four areas of expertise, each demanding specific methodological and theoretical skills which we teach with a comparative approach to different areas. The unit continues to structure linguistic activities at INALCO, thanks to interdisciplinary linguistics courses for undergraduates, the management of a Master’s in linguistics which is co-accredited with INALCO-Paris 3, and the coordination of 5 doctoral seminars that are open to all.