Pierre-Michel Menger attended secondary school in Forbach, then Strasbourg, before being admitted to the École normale supérieure on the rue d'Ulm, where he studied philosophy and then sociology. He was a resident of the Fondation Thiers between 1978 and 1981, where he completed his doctoral thesis at the EHESS. He was recruited by the CNRS in 1981, where he spent his career as a research fellow and then research director, receiving a silver medal in 1999. Since 1995, he has also held a number of lectureships at EHESS, where he is also Director of Studies. It was at EHESS that he directed the Centre de sociologie du travail et des arts between 1992 and 2005. He has also taught at the Institut d'études politiques de Paris. A Fellow of Berlin's Wissenschaftskolleg in 2006-2007, he has been invited to research and lecture in most European countries, as well as in the USA, Canada, Japan, Australia and Singapore. He is or has been a member of the editorial and scientific committees of French and foreign journals in sociology, economics, law, management, history, art history and literary research, disciplines in which his articles have been published. He is the author of some fifteen books as sole author, co-author and editor. Since 2013, Pierre-Michel Menger has been Professor at the Collège de France, where he holds the Sociology of Creative Work Chair.