Our Research Policy

43 research units, including 13 joint research units ("Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - CNRS") and 1 unit research support ("Maison des Sciences de l’Homme Mondes - MSH Mondes"), 1,200 (university) lecturers and researchers, 6 doctoral schools, 1,300 PhD students, 1 Research and Doctoral Studies Department ("Direction de la Recherche et des Etudes Doctorales - DRED”).

2 Universities Research Schools (“Ecoles Universitaires de Recherche - EUR”): Artec and HED
2 Laboratories of Excellence (“Laboratoires d’Excellence - LABEX”): Labex "Individuals, Populations, Societies" ("Individus, Populations, Sociétés - iPOPs") and Labex "Pasts in present" ("Les passés dans le présent”)

Strengthening disciplinary excellence and interdisciplinarity

University Paris Nanterre is a major French university in the Paris region, a partner of Université Paris Lumières and the Condorcet Campus. It is a multidisciplinary university, where internationally recognised research of excellence covers the entire field of humanities and social sciences. Arts, literature and philosophy, social sciences, history and archaeology, legal and political sciences, economics and management, foreign languages and cultures, modelling, social behaviour and communication, educational sciences, psychology and neuroscience. But also mathematics, science and technologies.

The well-being of our students and PhD candidates being a core objective of the UNISSON project ("UNiversité de l’Innovation Sociale et SOlidaire de Nanterre"), our university attaches great importance to providing them with training through and in research.

Fostering researchers’ creativity

Our university develops a wide variety of research projects, ranging from experimental to participatory research, from fundamental to applied research, and from research carried out within the research platforms on campus to research carried out in local or international research areas.

A university open to the world

Our international partnerships are extremely numerous, prestigious and well established. Our university contributes to the structuring research dynamics of the EDUC (European Digital UniverCity) alliance, one of the first 17 European university alliances to be accredited by the European Commission.

Committing to open science and research ethics

University Paris Nanterre is committed to open science, giving everyone free access to research publications and data, in line with the FAIR principles (easy to find, freely accessible, reusable and exchangeable within an appropriate scientific, legal, ethical and technical framework). It is one of the partners of the multi-institutional team responsible for deploying the Data Gouv research repository, and its data workshop project (“Atelier de la Donnée") at and for Nanterre has been accredited by the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research ("Ministère de l'enseignement supérieur, de la recherche et de l'innovation - MESRI").

It supports the development of honest and ethical research practices, guaranteeing the honesty and rigour of researchers, a prerequisite for trust in science.

Contributing to understanding the major challenges facing society today

Our university is located in a region with highly contrasting urban areas and a wide diversity of population segments, ranging from residents of the surrounding communes (with very different social backgrounds, housing, living conditions and access to culture) to users of the La Défense business district.

To achieve this, and in line with our values, we wish to reinforce disciplinary and interdisciplinary scientific research to better understand human and social facts and thus contribute, in an original fashion, to the analysis of today's major societal challenges and to the co-construction of social innovation processes. Our university and our research units are developing solid, long-standing collaborative research partnerships with local stakeholders: local and regional authorities, businesses, associations, etc.

Strengthening the science-society dialogue

Our researchers have also long been involved in initiatives to open up science to civil society and the socio-economic and cultural world. Thanks to the Science with and for Society label (“Science Avec et Pour la Société - SAPS-MESRI”), our university is able to structure a coherent policy and deploy actions and mechanisms to promote research results (dissemination, mediation, meetings, participatory research, etc.), in collaboration with its partners and catering to the target audiences (general public, schools, public unfamiliar with science, professionals, politicians).

Updated on 19 juillet 2024