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.

The MESHS research work is based on three sets of research programs, each with 3 transverse areas:

Research programs:

• Vulnerabilities
• Anticipations

Transverse areas

• Digital humanities
• DataNum

The MESHS provides assistance in designing and drafting interdisciplinary research proposals on the national and international levels. Its team offers expertise in all the relevant aspects of research project proposal, such as IP, impacts, open access publishing, dissemination, etc.

Once researchers receive (research) funds, the MESHS team supports, hosts and manages the project in all its administrative and scientific facets, particularly in the dissemination and enhancement of research results utilisation.

MESHS houses the University Platform of DATA in Lille (PUDL), which provides researchers and PhD students with the major survey files produced by government agencies or parastatals such as INSEE, INED, Ministries, CNR, etc. MESHS also has an IT support service that develops digital tools and offers access to a documentation-sharing platform.

Its active policy of scientific mediation is another effective way for MESHS to play its role as a promoter of HSS and to bridge the gap between the academic world and wider society. A double objective motivates it: to go beyond scholars and reach a far wider public by a robust policy of information and knowledge diffusion, and, through this process, to allow the public to understand the crucial role that HSS play in their decisions and actions.

MESHS thus organizes monthly lectures and an annual three-week event of conferences and roundtables, called “HSS in the Spring”, devoted to an interdisciplinary topic addressed from different points of view: "Laughter" (2013) ; “Wealth” (2014) ; “Europe - (re)foundation” (2015) ; “Identity(ies)” (2016); "Emancipation" (2017)"; "the fringes" (2018); "What if? Science and fiction" (2019); "Plants" (2021); "Democracy" (2022).

Publi.meshs.fr is the portal used to disseminate video and audio scientific contents.

MESHS also launches its own calls for interdisciplinary projects to promote the emergence of innovative interdisciplinary projects. It usually offers 3 kinds of grants for policy-relevant research through an evaluation conducted by an external scientific committee.

• “Structuring projects” for structuring interdisciplinary projects (up to €20,000 - duration: 2 years)
• “Emergent grants” to help researchers during one year to draft and design national and international interdisciplinary projects (up to €8,000 - duration: 1 ½ year)
• “Collaborative activity grants” for cross-laboratory operations (seminars, workshops - up to €2,000 - duration: 1 year)

The MESHS has 2,170 m² in two buildings in the centre of Lille and welcomes scholars in downtown Lille, just a twenty-minute metro ride from all the local university libraries. The building offers visiting scholars or project coordinator/partners offices (with 70 computers available) and gives them access to 2 seminar rooms (max. capacity: 30), a smaller room (max. capacity: 20), a room fully dedicated to videoconferencing sessions, and a 200 m² conference room (which can be divided up to 3 rooms - max capacity: 150).