presentation

The MESHS - the European Centre for the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) - is a research centre situated in Lille.

It belongs to the French National network of Research Institutes in Humanities and Social Sciences, and is under the authority of the CNRS (French National Centre for Scientific Research) and the universities of the Hauts de France region in Northern France, including the University of Lille (one of the largest French centres for higher education, academic research and doctoral studies).

MESHS seeks to support, structure and disseminate research in humanities and social sciences (HSS) by bridging the gap between laboratories and disciplines, and between HSS and “hard sciences”. MESHS also links together HSS labs, innovation clusters, regional clusters of scientific excellence, companies and local authorities. Since its foundation it has thus played a pivotal role in structuring regional HSS research.

As a federation of projects, MESHS has no permanent academic staff, but works in conjunction with 43 partner laboratories - employing 2000 scholars - and four HSS-related local doctoral programs.

This configuration gives to the MESHS ability to structure regional strengths in most HSS research areas: anthropology, sociology, economics, geography, land use, environment, management, law, political science, information and communication, education science, psychology, languages, linguistics, history, archaeology, philosophy, philology, literature and landscape studies.