Biography

Didier Fassin is a Fellow of the School of Social Sciences at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study and Director of Studies in Political and Moral Anthropology at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales. In 2021, he held the annual chair in public health at the Collège de France. An anthropologist, sociologist and physician, he is qualified to direct research in public health and the social sciences. Co-founder of Iris, Institut de recherche interdisciplinaire sur les enjeux sociaux (Université Paris 13-EHESS-CNRS-Inserm), he was its first director. Visiting Professor at Princeton University, he has been a visiting professor at numerous universities, including Hong Kong, Chengdu, Melbourne, Johannesburg, Buenos Aires, Cambridge and Brussels.

Recipient in 2016 of the Gold Medal for Anthropology at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, in 2018 he was the first social scientist to be awarded the Nomis Distinguished Scientist Award. He received the insignia of Doctor Honoris Causa from the University of Liège in 2021 and from the Free University of Brussels in 2023. He has given the Tanner Lectures at the University of California, Berkeley, the Adorno Lectures at Goethe University Frankfurt and the Raphael Lemkin Inaugural Lecture at Rutgers University. He has been a member of Inserm's scientific council, the ethics committees of Inra and Institut Pasteur, and the scientific council of the City of Paris. He is a member of the Comité consultatif national d'éthique. A former vice-president of Médecins sans Frontières, he now chairs Comede, the Committee for the Health of Exiles.

He has published fifty books, translated into seven languages. He is the author of La Raison humanitaire. A moral history of the present (2010) ;La Force de l'ordre. Une anthropologie de la police des quartiers (2011) ;Juger, réprimer, accompagner. Essai sur la morale de l'État (2013) ;L'Ombre du monde. Une anthropologie de la condition carcérale (2015) ;Punir. Une passion contemporaine (2017) ;La Vie. Mode d'emploi critique (2018), Death of a Traveler. Une contre-enquête (2020), Les Mondes de la santé publique. Excursions anthropologiques, and with Anne-Claire Defossez, L'Exil, toujours recommencé. Chronique de la frontière, all published by Editions du Seuil.

He has also edited or co-edited Contemporary States of Emergency (Zone Books, 2010), A Companion to Moral Anthropology (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012),If Truth Be Told. The Politics of Public Ethnography (Duke UP, 2017), Deepening Divides. How Physical Borders and Social Boundaries Delineate our World (Pluto, 2020), Worlds and Words. A Lexicon for Dark Times (Duke UP, 2021), Crisis under Critique. How People Assess, Transform and Respond to Critical Situation (Columbia UP, 2022), The Social Sciences in the Looking-Glass. Studies in the Production of Knowledge (Duke UP, 2023), and La Société qui vient (Seuil, 2022). His two opening lectures, De l'inégalité des vies (2020) and Sciences sociales par temps de crise (2023) were published by the Collège de France.

Selected bibliography

  • L’Exil, toujours recommencé. Chronique de la frontière

    Fassin D. et Defossez A.-C., L’Exil, toujours recommencé. Chronique de la frontière, Paris, Seuil, 2024, 433 p.

  • La Recherche à l’épreuve du politique. Tribulations ethnographiques

    Fassin D., La Recherche à l’épreuve du politique. Tribulations ethnographiques, Paris, Textuel, 2023, 77 p.

  • The Social Sciences in the Looking-Glass. Studies in the Production of Knowledge

    Fassin D. et Steinmetz G. (dir.), The Social Sciences in the Looking-Glass. Studies in the Production of Knowledge, Durham, Duke University Press, 2022, 409 p. 

  • Les Mondes de la santé publique. Excursions anthropologiques. Cours au Collège de France 2021

    Fassin D.,  Les Mondes de la santé publique. Excursions anthropologiques. Cours au Collège de France 2021, Paris, Seuil, 2021, 392 p. English translation Polity Press 2023.

  • La Société qui vient

    Fassin, D. (dir.), La Société qui vient, Paris, Seuil, 2022, 1344 p.

  • Crisis Under Critique. How People Assess, Transform, and Respond to Critical Situations

    Fassin, D., & Honneth, H. (dir.), Crisis Under Critique. How People Assess, Transform, and Respond to Critical Situations, New York, Columbia University Press, 2022, 456 p.

  • Pandemic Exposures: Economy and Society in the Time of Coronavirus

    Fassin, D., & Fourcade, M. (dir.), Pandemic Exposures: Economy and Society in the Time of Coronavirus, Chicago, Hau Books, 2021, 474 p.

  • Words and Worlds: A Lexicon for Dark Times

    Das, V., & Fassin, D., (dir.), Words and Worlds: A Lexicon for Dark Times, Durham: NC, Duke University Press, 2021, 328 p.

  • Mort d’un voyageur. Une contre-enquête

    Fassin, D. Mort d'un voyageur. Une contre-enquête, Paris, Seuil, 2020, 160 p., English translation Polity Press 2022.

  • La Force de l’ordre. Une enquête ethno-graphique

    Fassin, D., Debomy, F. et Raynal, J. La Force de l’ordre. Une enquête ethno-graphique, Paris, Seuil/Delcourt, 2020, 100 p., English translation Other Press, 2022.

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Past chairs