Recent activities
We present here our recent activities conducted during the last two years.
For a more comprehensive view of our activities since 2014, including roundtables, publications, and support to some activities of the FMSH, see our page archives
2025
After the conference on Ignacy Sachs held in November 2024, we have finalized in 2025, on our website, the presentation of documents linked of the event, or providing additional information. See the texts written by a dozen of contributors, the links to the videos released on Canal U, and the long conversation between Bettina Laville and Ignacy Sachs published in French in the journal “Vraiment Durable” in 2012, just before the historic UN Conference on sustainable development held in Rio de Janeiro. We thanks Marlène Monteneiro the translation in English of this important document.
See on our website www.amisfmsh.org the page Recent Activities 2024.
We are pleased to announce the creation of the Wallerstein Institute for World Futures, founded by Katharine Wallerstein, the daughter of the first president of the Friends of the FMSH, herself a member of our association. Katharine has a doctorate in Rhetoric from University of California, Berkeley. A researcher in the field of aesthetics and politics, she has also held the position of Associate Director of the UC Davis Humanities Institute. Today she is based in Paris, where she is Associate Researcher at the Centre de recherche sur les arts et le language (CRAL) at the EHESS. She has many years of experience in organizing conferences, interdisciplinary initiatives, and international networks. Below please find a presentation of the scope of action of the Wallerstein Institute, which for now is based at the FMSH.
As a reminder, the brochure from the roundtable discussion organized by our Association in tribute to Immanuel Wallerstein is still available online an the Asssociation’s website, on the 2019 Archives page: PDF_Wallerstein.pdf
The concept and the objectives of the Wallerstein Institute for World Futures are presented here : concept and the objectives
In 2025 we have renewed our financial support to the PAUSE Programme, conducted by the Collège de France to the benefit of scholars and artists compelled to exile and whose research is hindered.
Our association has a seat on the Supervisory Board of the FMSH. Within the Board, Hinnerk Bruhns, from 2021 to 2024, and later on Jean-Luc Racine, have joined the committee dedicated to the elaboration of the new statutes of the Foundation. These new statutes have been approved by the Board on September 25th 2025, and transferred to the Home Ministry dedicated platform on October 10th. They are now operational.
2024
The release of the posthumous volume L’Asie Monde III (CNRS Publishers, 2024), edited by Jean-François Sabouret, who passed away in 2023, has offered the opportunity to recall what have been, within the FMSH, the birth in 2001 and then the development of the Réseau Asie (Asia Network), under his leadership. On April 26th, 2024, an homage to Jean-François Sabouret has been organised at the National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilisations (INALCO). Amongst other speakers, Maurice Aymard, Jean-Luc Racine et Jean-Claude Thivolle shared their memories on the Asia Network, an initiative which finally, outside the FMSH and under the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) patronage, gave birth to the current ‘GIS Asie’, a network federating the community of French and Belgian studies on Asia : amongst others, an example of the incubation policy conducted by the FMSH, as testified as well, for instance, the genesis of the Paris Institute of Advanced Studies.
Supporting the colloquium “Twenty Years of the Autumn University in History. Exchange and training between China, France and Switzerland”
The Franco-Chinese Autumn University has been launched in 2003-2004 thanks to Jean-Claude Thivolle for FMSH and Duanmu Mei for the Chinese Society for the History of France and Switzerland (under the aegis of the Chinese Academy of Social sciences). Along with Roger Way (Wei Aoyu), the translator who played a decisive role during these two decades, Maurice Aymard and Duanmu Mei have organised in Paris the colloquium, attended by Jean-Claude Thivolle and many participants. Our Association has offered seed money for this initiative.
The colloquium, hosted by FMSH on July 3rd, 2024, was structured in four sessions, attended by a large number of historians and social scientists who had joined the Autumn University activities.
The programme of the colloquium is available here (in French): Link here to the programme
The videos of the four sessions are available on Canal U, on the following model link:
https://www.canal-u.tv/chaines/fmsh/xxe-anniversaire-de-l-universite-d-automne-première-partie
For discovering the two volumes, Temps croisés I & II, edited by Duanmu Mei and Hugues Tertrais and published by FMSH in 2010, see here:
Volume I : https://books.openedition.org/editionsmsh/883?lang=fr
Volume II : https://books.openedition.org/editionsmsh/1761?lang=fr
Dianmu Mei’s presentation of the Chinese Society for the Study of French History is available here: link here: THE CHINESE SOCIETY
For an historical account and an academic assessment of the Autumn University, see the note here: link here: WHAT IS THE AUTUMN UNIVERSITY
The academic partners and the topics addressed during the twenty years of the Autumn University are available here. link here: 20 YEARS OF AUTUMN UNIVERSITY
Along with nine institutional partners, Our Association has organised à FMSH, on November 13th, 2024, a colloquium assessing the scientific itinerary and legacy of Ignacy Sachs, who passed away in 2023
To pay tribute to Ignacy Sachs is to pay tribute to the visionary eco-development theorist who, as early as the 1970s, laid the foundations of a balance to be achieved between growth, social issues and ecology, emphasising the extent to which the countries of what was then known as the Third World must free themselves from the dependence and models of the so-called advanced countries.
A citizen of the world, between Poland, Brazil, India and France, he was also a teacher and a builder of institutions, such as the International Research Centre on Environment and Development (CIRED) and the Research Centre on Colonial and Contemporary Brazil (CRBC).
His pioneering career has a particular resonance in today’s world, where climate and geopolitical changes are redefining the meaning of contemporary developments. Between past and present, this conference will illustrate what was and still is the intellectual contribution of the man who defined himself as an ‘eco-socio-economist’, a way of highlighting the interweaving of three intersecting imperatives.
Twenty speakers from various countries will offer their views, along four thematic panels. An exchange with Krzysztof Pomian, our key witness, will bring the conference to its end.
- The videos of the four sessions and of the exchange with Krysztof Pomian, are available on the Canal U link:
- Some speakers have kindly sent us their text. We publish them here below:
Session 1.
Robert Boyer (in French) : link here
Antonin Pottier (in French) : link here
Emilio Lèbre La Rovere (in French) : link here
Session 2.
Bernard Chavance (in French) : link here
Marcin Kula (in French) : link here
Malgorzata Mazurek (in English) : link here
Session 3.
Luis Carlos Bresser-Pereira (in French) : link here
Ladislau Dowbor (in English) : link here
Deepak Nayyar (in English) : link here
Rosa Freire d’Agular (in French) : link here
Francisco Sagasti (in English) : link here
Session 4.
Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, with a comment by Marcelo Daher (in French) : link here
More texts may follow
For going further
- You may discover on Canal U the six interviews given (in French) by Ignacy Sachs in 2008 to the Audio-visual Research Archives Programme of the FMSH : https://www.canal-u.tv/chaines/fmsh/penser-le-developpement-au-xxie-siecle
- You may also read the long exchange conducted in 2012 between Ignacy Sachs and Bettina Laville, the founder of the Vraiment durable journal, today Honorary State Counsellor, and Chairperson of the Paris Institute for Advanced Studies.:
See the original paper in French : link here
See the English translation of the interview of Ignacy Sachs by Bettina Laville : link here
We are grateful to Dr Bettina Laville, who interviewed Ignacy Sachs for her journal Vraiment durable, for having accepted the publication of this major exchange on our website, including an English translation of it.
Marlène Monteiro deserves our sincere thanks for this translation.
Afrânio-Raul Garcia Jr. In memoriam
Since the launching of the Sachs project, Dr Afranio Garcia, an anthropologist teaching at the School for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS) in Paris and a scholar affiliated to the Reflexive Group on Contemporary Brazil within the European Centre for Sociology and Political Science (CESSP), has been deeply involved with the preparation of the event. Seriously ill, he spoke on video during the colloquium, from his hospital bed. This was his last academic intervention, as he passed way a fortnight later, on November 30th.
We wish to pay here a sincere homage to a scholar who was close to Ignacy Sachs, and who, for a long time, has played an important role in the field of French studies on Brazil.
On Afranio Garcia’s scientific career, see the piece published by the French Sociology Association on December 6th, 2024
In 2024 we have renewed our financial support to the PAUSE Programme, conducted by the Collège de France to the benefit of scholars and artists compelled to exile and whose research is hindered.