The School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences is a graduate grande école and grand établissement in Paris focused on academic research in the social sciences. It is regarded as one of the most prestigious institutions of graduate education in France. The school awards Master and PhD degrees alone and conjointly with the grandes écoles École normale supérieure, École polytechnique, and École pratique des hautes études.
Julien Michel Leiris was a French surrealist writer and ethnographer. Part of the Surrealist group in Paris, Leiris became a key member of the College of Sociology with Georges Bataille and head of research in ethnography at the CNRS.
Edgar Morin is a French philosopher and sociologist of the theory of information who has been recognized for his work on complexity and "complex thought", and for his scholarly contributions to such diverse fields as media studies, politics, sociology, visual anthropology, ecology, education, and systems biology. As he explains: He holds two bachelors: one in history and geography and one in law. He never did a Ph.D. Though less well known in the anglophone world due to the limited availability of English translations of his over 60 books, Morin is renowned in the French-speaking world, Europe, and Latin America.
Pierre Emmanuel Vidal-Naquet was a French historian who began teaching at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) in 1969.
Françoise Héritier was a French anthropologist, ethnologist, and feminist. She was the successor of Claude Lévi-Strauss at the Collège de France. Her work dealt mainly with the theory of alliances and on the prohibition of incest. In addition to Lévi-Strauss, she was also influenced by Alfred Radcliffe-Brown. She was replaced by Philippe Descola, who is the current holder of the chair of anthropology at the Collège.
Jean-Pierre Vernant was a French historian and anthropologist, specialist in ancient Greece. Influenced by Claude Lévi-Strauss, Vernant developed a structuralist approach to Greek myth, tragedy, and society which would itself be influential among classical scholars. He was an honorary professor at the Collège de France.
Dan Sperber is a French social and cognitive scientist and philosopher. His most influential work has been in the fields of cognitive anthropology, linguistic pragmatics, psychology of reasoning, and philosophy of the social sciences. He has developed: an approach to cultural evolution known as the epidemiology of representations or cultural attraction theory as part of a naturalistic reconceptualization of the social; relevance theory; the argumentative theory of reasoning. Sperber formerly Directeur de Recherche at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique is Professor in the Departments of Cognitive Science and of Philosophy at the Central European University in Budapest.
André-Georges Haudricourt was a French botanist, anthropologist and linguist.
Jean Bottéro was a French historian born in Vallauris. He was a major Assyriologist and a renowned expert on the Ancient Near East. He died in Gif-sur-Yvette.
Marcel Detienne was a Belgian historian and specialist in the study of ancient Greece. He was a professor at Johns Hopkins University, where he held the Basil L. Gildersleeve chair in Classics.
The Baruya are a people of the highlands of Papua New Guinea. They have been studied since 1967 by anthropologist Maurice Godelier. There are approximately 1500 Baruya people living in the Wonenara and Marawaka valleys.
Jean-François Kahn is a French journalist and essayist.
Georges Louis Condominas was a French cultural anthropologist, known for his field studies of the Mnong people of Vietnam.
The CNRS Gold Medal is the highest scientific research award in France. It is presented annually by the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and was first awarded in 1954. Moreover, the CNRS Silver Medal is given to researchers for originality, quality, and importance, while the CNRS Bronze Medal recognizes initial fruitful results.
Claude Lévi-Strauss was a French anthropologist and ethnologist whose work was key in the development of the theories of structuralism and structural anthropology. He held the chair of Social Anthropology at the Collège de France between 1959 and 1982, was elected a member of the Académie française in 1973 and was a member of the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris. He received numerous honours from universities and institutions throughout the world.
The Centre de Recherche et de Documentation sur l'Océanie, also known as CREDO is a cross-disciplinary research laboratory in social and cultural anthropology, history and archaeology including researchers and lecturers from three institutions: the CNRS, the EHESS and the University of Provence. Its main focus of research and teaching are the past and contemporary societies of the Pacific, Australia included.
Carlo Severi is an Italian anthropologist who is Professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS). He is noted for his studies of ritual, image/imagination, and social memory
Jean Yoyotte was a French Egyptologist, a professor of Egyptology at the Collège de France and director of research at the École pratique des hautes études (EPHE).
Jean-Paul Brisson was a French honorary professor of Latin language and civilisation at the Paris West University Nanterre La Défense. He devoted himself particularly to the social problems of antiquity, North Africa during Antiquity and classical poets.
Elena Cassin,, was an Italian-born French Assyriologist.
