About us
The Center for Research in Philosophy, Semiology, Sociology, and Politics (PHILéPOL) is a research unit of Paris Cité University (URP 7538), attached to the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. It is directed by Juan ALONSO ALDAMA and brings together semioticists, sociologists, and philosophers interested in the comparative analysis of developments in contemporary democracies.
The research conducted by PHILéPOL members is multidisciplinary and has a strong international dimension. It focuses on sociological and socio-semiotic, empirical, and comparative questions about the crises and “critical limits” that, between consensus and conflict, modulate the transitions between democracy and authoritarianism in different regions of the world (the West, the Arab world, South America).
This issue is approached from a sociological and semiotic perspective of mobilizations focused on the question of engagement, disengagement, and defection of the collective actors who are its agents. Particular attention is paid to the complex relationships between democracy and ecology, i.e., how the environmental crisis weakens the material and institutional foundations of political regimes, while also fueling social movements and theoretical developments that in turn undermine these regimes.
PHILéPOL members work closely with other laboratories at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, as well as with international researchers (in Europe, South and North America, and the Arab world). They lead doctoral seminars and teach various courses within the Faculty’s Language Sciences and Social Sciences departments. They are involved in national (ANR, GIS Middle East and Muslim Worlds) and international research structures and contribute to the research training of master’s and doctoral students in semiotics, sociology and political science.
Depending on their area of specialisation, the many doctoral students at PHILéPOL are enrolled either in the Doctoral School of Language Sciences (ED 622) or the Doctoral School of Social Sciences (ED 624) at Paris Cité University. They are an integral part of the scientific events and seminars offered by the laboratory, and teach language sciences, sociology and political science within the UFR SHS.
Two areas of research structure all of the investigations carried out by the laboratory’s tenured lecturers, associate researchers and doctoral students.