The Collège de France in 10 questions

According to its motto Docet Omnia, it teaches all things : the 50 or so teaching and research chairs at the Collège de France, each occupied by a professor, cover all fields of knowledge, from mathematics and computer science to literature and the arts, as well as physics, chemistry, biology, Paleoanthropology, history, law, economics and sociology...

All lectures, seminars and colloquia at the Collège de France are open to the public, and the main site on Place Marcelin Berthelot, with its amphitheaters and lecture halls, is accessible to the general public.

The Cardinal Lemoine site, home to the Institute of Civilizations, and the Ulm site are reserved for research activities.

Lectures are open to all, regardless of enrolment or qualifications. All you need to do is turn up a few minutes before the scheduled lecture time to be able to attend, subject to availability, as some are very well attended.

Professors at the Collège de France are elected by the Assembly of the Collège de France, i.e. all active professors. No academic degree is required of those standing for election ; what counts is the importance and originality of their work. While the vast majority of professors are university researchers, artists and writers are also regularly elected.

Professors either hold a "statutory" chair for the rest of their career, or are invited to temporarily occupy an "annual" chair.

Lectures are open to all, and Collège de France does not issue diplomas.

Students enrolled in a doctoral school that has signed an agreement with the Collège de France may, however, benefit from the validation of certain credits, provided they attend lectures regularly.

The research carried out is as extensive and varied as the fields of study of the Collège de France chairs, and goes even further, since the establishment hosts, in whole or in part, 13 research laboratories (UMR) and several dozen research teams working on shorter-term projects. This research is structured within the 8 Collège de France institutes.

The vast majority of lectures at the Collège de France are recorded in their entirety, and made freely available on this website and on the Collège de France podcast channels a few days after the lecture. In this way, certain lectures are available in their entirety, often over many years.

The quality of the lectures, the reputation of the French and international lecturers, the variety of subjects covered, and the fact that tens of thousands of hours of audiovisual archives are available immediately and freely, make this distribution unique in the world.

The Collège de France Publishing Department publishes around twenty new titles each year. Inaugural lectures, the Collège de France Yearbook with abstracts of lectures since 1901, research works, lecture series, symposium proceedings, closing lectures: all are derived from lectures given at the Collège de France or are based on research carried out within the institution.

Digital books are marketed and openly accessible on OpenEdition Books. Printed books are sold in bookshops, as well as at the reception desk of the Collège de France heritage library on the Marcelin Berthelot site.

The heritage library and archive services are open to the general public, and in particular to researchers and lecture visitors. The Institute of Civilizations' specialized libraries are open to researchers and students at Master's level and above.

Collège de France offers employment to both civil servants and contract staff. It is committed to supporting and promoting equality, diversity and inclusion within its communities by encouraging applications from a variety of backgrounds, selected through an open and transparent recruitment process.

If you are interested in joining the Collège de France, please visit our Recruitment and Internships section.