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Années thématiques

This year, the lecture series of the Maison des Sciences Humaines at ULB explores the place of the humanities and social sciences in the face of political, economic and institutional pressures seeking to shape the production of knowledge.

Through a variety of approaches and disciplines, the lectures will explore the conditions for independent, critical and situated research, as well as possible forms of resistance to the demands of power.

Programme for the year

  • Tuesday, September 29, 2026 — Opening conference "Les conditions de production d'une pensée contre et pour" by Françoise Vergès

  • October 2026 — Conference “Reworlding Peace: From Border Making to Border Thinking within Burundian-Congolese Borderlands” by Astrid Jamar, multidisciplinary researcher based at the Visual and Digital Cultures Research Centre (ViDi), University of Antwerp, Belgium

  • October 2026 — Conference "Instrumentalisations et résistances religieuses dans l'Amérique de Trump" by Blandine Chelini-Pont, Professor of Contemporary History and International Relations at Aix-Marseille University, France

  • October 2026 — Conference by Hakan Yücel, sociologist and political scientist at Galatasaray University, Turkey

  • December 2026 — Conference by Magali Bessone, Professor of Political Philosophy, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France

  • January 25–29, 2027 — Academic self-defense seminar "Sciences non-alignées : Produire du savoir face au pouvoir"
    Programme de la semaine à venir

  • April 2027 — Conference by Madina Tlostanova, Professor of Postcolonial Feminisms at Linköping University, Sweden

  • April 2027 — Conference "Comment produire du savoir juridique concernant des processus internes déployés par les organismes de protection sociale ?" by Laure Camaji, researcher and lecturer in law and Associate Professor at Université Lumière Lyon 2, France

  • April 2027 — Conference by Ayşen Uysal, Professor of Political Science at Dokuz Eylül University, Turkey

  • Wednesday, May 12, 2027 — Closing conference by Meredith Whittaker, President of the Signal Foundation

  • Date to be determined — Conference by Stéphane Paquin, Full Professor at ENAP and holder of the Jarislowsky Chair, Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières (UQTR), Canada

  • Date to be determined — Conference by Jessie Lapov, Associate Professor in Communication and Media Studies and Senior Researcher at the Corvinus Institute for Advanced Studies, Corvinus University, Hungary

  • Date to be determined — Conference by Jan Jakub Surman, historian at the Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences (MÚA AV ČR), Czech Republic

How and where is knowledge in the humanities and social sciences (HSS) produced? What role do the HSS play in our societies today?

These are the questions that the MSH aims to explore in celebration of its tenth anniversary in 2025–2026, through lectures, roundtables, workshops, an exhibition, and a Spring of HSS.

Program of events over the two weeks:

Tuesday, March 17:

Wednesday, March 18:

Thursday, March 19:

Tuesday, March 24:

Thursday, March 26:

View the full program (PDF, in french).

The core focus of the 2023 programming for Paroles menacées. Solidarity with scholars at risk was the situation of researchers who are threatened or imprisoned in countries where academic freedom and freedom of teaching are under political tyranny. It also addressed how academic freedoms are increasingly under threat within democratic societies.

The theme of academic freedom was explored in relation to artistic, journalistic, and intellectual freedoms.

MSH Events:

  • 9 February 2023 – Conference: "Reframing the Armenian-Azerbaijani Past: What can scholars do?"

  • 16 February 2023 – Conference & Exhibition Opening: "Standing for Freedom"

  • 17 February to 16 March 2023 – Exhibition: "Standing for Freedom"

  • 7 March 2023 – Conference: "Higher Education during the Russian War against Ukraine: Responsibility, Resilience, Resistance"

  • 7 March 2023 – Conference: "The Evolution of University Autonomy in an EU Candidate Country: The Case of Turkey and the Academics for Peace"

  • 9 March 2023 – Film screening: "Living in Truth"

  • 17 March 2023 – Conference: "Memorial – Fighting for Memory in Russia"

  • 18 March 2023 – Performance: "Words in Exile"

  • 19 April 2023 – Round table: "The Reactionary Investment in Knowledge: A Threat to Academic Freedom?"

View the full programme of ULB’s initiative

In 2022, the MSH hosted a series of activities that brought scientific research and artistic research into dialogue.


This theme stems from the observation that scientific production in the social sciences and humanities has recently seen the emergence of new research methodologies that combine artistic practices with scholarly knowledge. At the heart of this dynamic, the role of the artist-researcher or researcher-artist raises new questions regarding methodological positioning and data analysis.

As part of this initiative, the MSH organized:

As their name suggests, the humanities focus broadly on the human.
They tend to consider the human being as a research object without systematically questioning its supposed ontological reality. But where does the human begin and end? What tensions and divisions inhabit humanity? How do these various boundaries help define the human? And what role do the academic disciplines themselves play in distinguishing between the human and the non-human?

In 2017–2018, the MSH-ULB explored these questions through a series of events, examining both external boundaries (the human and its "other") and internal boundaries (divisions within humanity) of this research object. The guiding assumption was that these boundaries are porous and fluid: they are variable, shifting, constructed — and as such, they are of interest not only in how they are defined, but also in how they evolve, their history, and their underlying dynamics. Who moves the boundaries of the human, how, and why?

The programme included:

Opening Session – Thursday, 5 October (5:30–7:30 p.m.)

THE BOUNDARIES OF THE HUMAN

THE HUMAN AND ITS OTHER