Chair for Health, Humanities and Social Sciences

Health issues are of major concern to contemporary societies, as the recent Covid-19 sanitary crisis gave evidence. The pandemic has brought into play the key question of social ties, and produced political decisions and new social behaviours within a few months. From the latter, humanities and social sciences tried to produce a narrative, using their disciplinary tools.
The ubiquitous notion of crisis helps us to grasp the importance of contemporary health issues: the Covid-19 sanitary crisis and the threat of new pandemics on a global scale; the crisis in occupational health over the last three decades, including the rise of mental health issues in the workplace and management scandals ; the crisis in the social protection system, challenged by the demographic changes of many ageing countries; the crisis in hospital and the mental health care system; the environmental crisis on a global scale, etc. Beyond these moments of climax and long-term impairments, the ordinary dimensions of human health cover a large range of issues that have been addressed by the various disciplines of the humanities and social sciences.

Held by Judith Rainhorn and hosted by the Centre d'histoire sociale des mondes contemporains (CHS), the Chair for Health, Humanities and Social Sciences aims to bring together research conducted at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and its partners. It will structure and network research initiatives using disciplinary and interdisciplinary tools of the humanities and social sciences to examine and understand the health issues in contemporary societies: multiscale health and social inequalities, building and changes in scientific knowledge, links between this knowledge, health expertise and policy-making. Public debate on issues such as human reproduction, the end of life and euthanasia, solidarity among communities and between generations, pollution, disability and work-related physical and mental suffering are some of the many key questions on which the social sciences and humanities have a legitimate role to play in providing useful and operational expertise.