Back-to-school program and new professors at Collège de France (2020-2021 academic year)

july 27, 2020

The 2020/2021 public lectures program is now online. Here you can discover the Collège de France's lectures for the 2020-2021 academic year in all their richness and variety.

Collège de France offers you an academic year 2020-2021 rich in highlights with :

• eight new professors and new chairs: Luigi Rizzi, Samantha Besson, Timothy Gowers, Jean-Philippe Bouchaud, Sonia Garel, Yadh Ben Achour, Frédéric Magniez ;
• an opening symposium at the Collège de France on October 22-23, on the theme of "Civilizations: questioning identity and diversity" ;
• a special "Comics at the Collège de France" cycle, with six guest authors to coincide with BD 2020;
• four closing lectures by professors Nicolas Grimal, Carlo Ossola, Christine Petit and Antoine Compagnon;
• and new publications from The Collège de France Publishing Department.

This year's public lectures program begins on September¹ , with the 2020-2021 lecture by Stanislas Dehaene, Experimental Cognitive Psychology Chair, on "The influence of language and symbols on perception and cognition".

Unless otherwise specified on the Collège de France website, all lectures are open to the public, free of charge and without prior registration. Classes are held at 11 place Marcelin-Berthelot - Paris^Ve.

The conditions for welcoming our public are subject to change depending on the health situation. We invite you to regularly consult the instructions and agenda updated on the Collège France website.

2020-2021: eight opening lectures

For this new academic year, the Collège de France will welcome four new full professors (Luigi Rizzi, Samantha Besson, Timothy Gowers, Sonia Garel) and four visiting professors on annual chairs (Yadh Ben Achour, Jean-Philippe Bouchaud, Chris Bowler, Frédéric Magniez).

Opening lectures :

• General Linguistics Chair - Mr Luigi Rizzi
  Opening lecture: November 5, 2020 at 6 p.m. - "Complexity of linguistic structures, simplicity of language mechanisms"
• International Law of Institutions Chair -^Ms Samantha Besson
  Opening lecture: December 3, 2020 at 6 p.m. - "Reconstructing the international institutional order"
• Combinatorics Chair - Mr Timothy Gowers
  Opening lecture: January 21, 2021 at 6 p.m. - "Combinatorics"
• Neurobiology and the Immune System Chair -^Mrs Sonia Garel
  Opening lecture: March 4, 2021 at 6 p.m. - "Immune system and brain dynamics"
• Annual Chair Biodiversity and Ecosystems (2020-2021), with the support of the Jean-François and Marie-Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre Foundation - Mr Chris Bowler
  Opening lecture: February 4, 2021 at 6 pm - "Biodiversity and Ecosystems across Time and Space"
• Annual Liliane Bettencourt Technological Innovation Chair (2020-2021) with the support of the Bettencourt Schueller Foundation - Mr. Jean-Philippe Bouchaud
  Opening lecture: February 25, 2021 at 6 p.m. - "From statistical physics to the social sciences: the challenges of multidisciplinarity"
• Annual Francophone Worlds Chair (2020-2021) in partnership with the Agence universitaire de la Francophonie - Mr. Yadh Ben Achour
  Opening lecture: March 25, 2021 at 6 p.m. - "Revolution, a hope"
• Annual Chair in Computer Science and Digital Sciences (2020-2021) in partnership with Inria - Mr. Frédéric Magniez
  Opening lecture: April^1, 2021 at 6 p.m. - "Quantum algorithms: when quantum physics challenges the Church-Turing thesis"

Other highlights of the new academic year at Collège de France

The new year will also see four closing lectures for the public in the first half of the year.

Closing lessons :

• Pharaonic Civilization Chair: Archaeology, Philology, History - M. Nicolas Grimal
  Closing lesson on October 19, 2020 at 3 pm
• Chair Literature of Neolatin Europe - Mr. Carlo Ossola
  Closing lesson on October 29, 2020 at 6 p.m
• Genetics and Cell Physiology Chair -^Ms Christine Petit
  Closing lesson on November 19, 2020 at 6 p.m
• Chair Modern and Contemporary French Literature: History, Criticism, Theory - Mr Antoine Compagnon
  Closing lesson on January 12, 2021 at 6 p.m

New releases from The Collège de France Publishing Department

September will also see the publication of several books edited or coedited by The Collège de France Publishing Department:

• (The Collège de France Publishing Department, "Conférences" series, in bookshops September 10)
  • David Simonetta and Alexandre de Vitry (eds.), Histoire et historiens des idées. Figures, methods, problems ;
  • Andrew Abbott, Facts and values;
• (The Collège de France Publishing Department/Fayard, "Opening lectures" series, in bookshops September 16)
  • François-Xavier Fauvelle, Lessons from the history of Africa;
  • Walter Fontana, Du calcul au vivant: le défi d'une science de l'organisation;
• (The Collège de France Publishing Department/Fayard, "Leçons inaugurales" series, in bookshops September 30)
  • François Recanati, Language, discourse and thought;
  • Didier Fassin, De l'inégalité des vies ;
  • William Marx, Living in the world's library.

These works will also be published in digital format on OpenEdition Books (full-text access as part of the freemium program).