Research chairs

Integrated within the MUSE Research Unit, the Emerging Worlds Research Chair comprises 12 faculty researchers with specific and complementary expertise on socio-(geo)political and cultural issues in Africa, Asia, South America, the post-Soviet world, as well as on specific thematic areas. The Chair aims to adopt a multidisciplinary scientific approach and a holistic perspective.

The Chair is organized around five interrelated themes, which, through their dialogue, seek to understand major contemporary challenges and issues:

• Contemporary Asian Issues

• Contemporary Africa

• Current Post-Soviet World

• Latin America

• Cultural, Intercultural, and Anthropocene Representations

The Chair, jointly hosted by C3RD and LITL, is directed by Andra COTTIGA.

Its mission is to develop targeted expertise in business ethics, particularly in the areas of compliance implementation and sustainability reporting for internationally oriented listed and non-listed companies. A key objective of the Chair is to address strong demand for training in these fields. Accordingly, a first professional program has been launched: the Diploma in International Compliance and Business Ethics (DU Compliance Internationale et Éthique des Affaires).

The Jean Rodhain Chair, directed by Sophie IZOARD, aims to develop teaching and research activities on the themes of solidarity and justice, in connection with Christian social thought. It operates under the auspices of the Jean Rodhain Foundation, which fosters the emergence of a network of theologians and scholars working from a specific perspective, with charity as the entry point for addressing and innovating solutions to contemporary world issues.

Within the framework of the Lille Chair, conferences, research seminars, and field activities are conducted annually, and a partnership with ESSLIL, the School of Social Sciences, has been established. The ethics of dignity is highlighted both as a central criterion for critically evaluating political, economic, and social choices and as a spiritual source for action.

Founded in 2021, the Sciences, Technosciences, and Faith in the Era of Integral Ecology Chair is directed by Thierry MAGNIN and Paulo RODRIGUES. Its objectives are to promote dialogue between the scientific, philosophical, and theological fields through interdisciplinary research groups; to explore the relationship between digitized technosciences and Christian faith in the context of integral ecology; to conceptualize integral ecology in connection with the heritage of process philosophy; and to reflect on biblical anthropology, assessing the impacts and transformations associated with technosciences.

Digital Health is an innovative and rapidly expanding industrial sector. For many stakeholders, it represents a key element in addressing the challenges of tomorrow’s healthcare. The field of digital health encompasses a broad and diverse range of areas, as reflected by the variety of terms in use and their growing prominence in the public sphere: connected health, e-health, telehealth, telemedicine, and so on. These digital innovations in healthcare often develop according to what has been described as “hyperactive inertia”: a chaotic proliferation of experiments that frequently result in a limited capacity to implement useful, desirable, and sustainable products.

How can the governance of this development be ensured? Directed by Lina WILLIATTE and Jean-Philippe COBBAUT, the Chair aims to better understand the legal and ethical challenges of digital health development and to propose avenues for democratic governance of this sector.

The Childhood and Families Research Chair, established in 2010, is directed by Blandine MALLEVAEY.

Its originality lies in enriching the legal expertise of its members—faculty researchers and PhD candidates in law—through the contributions of scholars in ethics, sociology, psychology, theology, and family economics. These collaborations enable a multidisciplinary approach to issues related to children, viewed as the foundational and central element of the family unit and its interactions within contemporary society.

This approach fulfills the Chair’s objective: to foster reflection on the recognition and implementation of children’s rights and on consideration of their best interests, particularly when family circumstances increase their vulnerability. The Chair develops its scientific activities around three research axes:

• Children at Risk

• Childhood, Family, and Justice

• Ethics and Families

The Chair in Comparative Direct Democracies is the first European chair dedicated to the study of direct democracy, in particular citizen initiative and legislative veto mechanisms. In response to the crisis in representative systems, it is developing innovative comparative research on the effects of different institutional models, beyond the Swiss and American cases alone. Supported by the Catholic University of Lille, Democracy International, and the Swiss Democracy Foundation, it contributes to the dissemination of knowledge through the Direct Democracy Navigator, research projects, international networks, and training and scientific promotion activities.

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