As part of his Sociology of Creative Work Chair, Prof. Pierre-Michel Menger's lectures are overtly multi-disciplinary, as required by the subjects covered by his lecture. He began with a general study of acts of work, but he sees work not as a disutility or a burden borne in order to obtain a remuneration that alone generates well-being and leisure, but as a gradable value. At one end of the spectrum is the tedious, routine nature of toil, and at the other is the positive value of work as a vehicle for self-realization.

The analysis shows how professions and employment statuses are arranged along this axis, and how work evolves under the influence of technologies, organizational modes and the balances sought collectively to modify the routine and expressive parts of work. International comparisons offer a rich field in which to explore the variability of cultures and ways of organizing work.

Rigorous study of higher education and research systems is far less developed in France than in the countries that dominate global scientific and academic competition. We need to examine the reasons for this backwardness and work to remedy it, as Prof. Pierre-Michel Menger is doing in the lectures he has devoted to the subject, in the symposia he has organized or led (in particular the Collège's opening symposium in October 2019) and in the empirical and statistical research he is conducting with his chair team.

A science of science was announced in the early 1960s, and is now being built, with Prof. Menger making his contribution. The arts were one of his fields of study, and he explored it above all from the angle of work, showing how the highest value can be accorded to the products of work that must remain uncertain in its reading if it is to be inventive and admired. The rating of individual abilities has changed over the last three decades: the semantics of talent have become widespread, and must be taken seriously, by restoring the long history of its uses and meanings, from the parable of the talents to the talent passport.

Pr Menger's proposed lectures and research will extend to other issues essential to the analysis of our contemporary societies, such as the controversies surrounding meritocracy, attitudes to risk and the social technologies of risk management, and entrepreneurial initiative.