New master programme EcoPhiloS

Presentation of the EMJM EcoPhiloS

Presentation of the EcoPhiloS consortium

Study pathways

Call for applications 2023

Ecology of Philosophical Knowledge and Critical Transversalities

Subject to the selection by the European Commission, the project of the Erasmus Mundus Joint Master’s programme “Ecologie des Savoirs Philosophiques et Transversalités critiques” (Ecology of philosophical knowledge and critical transversalities) (EcoPhiloS) foresees to award a joint degree in philosophy from the universities of Toulouse 2 – Jean Jaurès (FR), Paris-8 Vincennes/Saint Denis (FR) and Liège (BE), and a double degree from the Arctic University of Norway (NO) and the Catholic University of Central Africa (CM), in the framework of a training in research into critical theories and in research-action-participation in philosophy with groups and territories involved in processes of epistemic, ecological, economic and social transition. It will combine the scientific, teaching and administrative skills of these universities with those of the universities of Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium), Andes (Colombia), International Integration of Afro-Brazilian Lusophonie (UNILAB in Brazil), Seoul (National of South Korea) and Misak (Colombia), as well as the choreographic study centres James Carlès (France) and Lafabri’k (Guadeloupe).

The goals of EcoPhiloS are to promote, in accordance with an imperative of epistemic justice:

1) a critical study of the history of European philosophy and its extra-European transformations,

2) a South-North and South-South transmission of critical philosophies in the Atlantic space Caribbean, Latin America, Africa, Europe),

3) the taking into consideration of the critical resources of the corpo-political epistemologies and creative practices of minority groups struggling to assert the ethical and political values of a common habitability of the world.

EcoPhiloS plans to train a generation of young researchers capable of contributing to the writing of a new geography of philosophising reason in the form of a pluriversal history of philosophical modernity, and of engaging in processes of transdisciplinary and transnational translations likely to bring about new responses to the ongoing civilizational crisis.

PRESENTATION OF THE EcoPhiloS CONSORTIUM

University of Toulouse 2

The research in philosophy at the UT2J examines the forms of rationality that philosophy has to invent or borrow in order to re-establish itself, and accompanies this questioning with research into knowledge that is institutionally or traditionally identified as outside the field of philosophical production, whether in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (social anthropology, sociology, history and psychoanalysis), or in the field of non-academic knowledge (non-Western or ‘traditional’ knowledge and the creation of knowledge stemming from emancipation movements and struggles). The ERRaPhiS research laboratory at UT2J, to which the EMJM EuroPhilosophie has been attached since 2006, has been systematically evaluated A+ by Hcéres (the French agency for the evaluation of research and higher education), as have 80% of the research laboratories at UT2J, which thus offers a research environment of excellence, characterised by a wide range of colloquia and cross-disciplinary seminars in the humanities and social sciences. Particularly dynamic in terms of student and cultural life, UT2J has the only large-scale university cultural building in Europe, La Fabrique, which puts on more than 120 shows a year in a dedicated auditorium with more than 170 seats (La Scène), as well as several high-level exhibition spaces.

University of Liège

The aim of philosophy research at the ULG is to decentralise modern and contemporary philosophical discourse, by making room on the one hand for the circulation of knowledge, critical dialogues and mutual translations that philosophy has maintained with the human sciences since the 20th century (anthropology, ethnography, sociology, history, law), and on the other hand for the radical reconfigurations of thought imposed today by feminist and decolonial knowledge carried by authors from the global South and minorities in the North. EcoPhiloS courses are supported by the “Matérialités de la Politique” political and social philosophy research centre, founded in 2014, which examines the philosophical heritage of post-war French and German thought, while favouring cross-disciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches, and which is concerned to link the production of academic knowledge to its circulation and transmission in the community, through activities to disseminate knowledge (workshops, conferences and round tables for the general public, …. ), interventions in the public arena, and expert missions. Philosophy researchers at the ULG are particularly involved in public institutions where they hold key positions, such as the “Centre pour l’égalité des chances et la lutte contre le racisme” (Delruelle), the « Agence des droits fondamentaux de l’Union Européenne » (Delruelle) and the « Comité consultatif de bio-éthique » (Caeymaex).

University of Paris 8

The philosophy department is an important hub for the University-World actions characteristic of this university, which was founded in 1968 as the Centre Universitaire Expérimental de Vincennes. As part of an intellectual ecology inherited from the research carried out by Gilles Deleuze, Jean Borreil, Jean-François Lyotard, René Schérer, Jacques Rancière, Alain Badiou and Daniel Bensaïd since it was founded on the initiative of Michel Foucault and François Châtelet, research in philosophy is structured within the Laboratoire d’Étude des Logiques Contemporaines de la Philosophie (LLCP) in three main areas : 1. “Hétérogénéité des mondes et logiques de l’émancipation” (under the responsibility of G. Sibertin-Blanc and Y. Kisukidi), 2. “Grammaire: fictions, comparaisons, rationalités” (under the responsibility of P. Cassou-Noguès), 3.  “Groupe européen de recherches philosophiques transdisciplinaires” (under the responsibility of E. Alliez). Each year, an international chair in philosophy welcomes an international researcher to present his/her work in progress in two seminars open to master students. The visiting researcher is selected by an international scientific committee which includes Giorgio Agamben, Achille Mbembe, Antonio Negri, Peter Osborne, Pablo Oyarzùn, John Rachjman, Martin Saar, Vladimir Safatle, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro. A “master/doctorate” seminar provides a weekly forum for research training and exchanges on current research on master et doctorate level.

Arctic University

UiT is the most northerly university in the world, with ten campuses strategically located throughout the Norwegian Arctic region. It focuses on generating knowledge that can provide innovative solutions to major societal challenges relating to climate and the environment, democracy and gender equality. Its location on the edge of the Arctic implies a mission. Climate change, the exploitation of Arctic resources and environmental threats are subjects of great concern to which the University of Tromsø is particularly interested. Research at UiT therefore focuses on the polar environment, climate, indigenous peoples, peace and conflict transformation, telemedicine, fisheries science and marine bioprospecting. As a highly international institution, the UiT welcomes around a thousand international students a year and its researchers come from 85 different countries. Researchers in the philosophy department come from Brazil, the UK, Hungary, Germany, Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark. The philosophy department offers a dynamic research environment for students interested in practical and applied philosophy, thanks to its four research groups: feminist philosophy, directed by Melina Duarte; environmental philosophy, directed by Clare Heyward; political philosophy (pluralism, democracy and justice), directed by Kim Angell; and ethics, directed by Attila Tanyi.

University of the Andes

The Department of Political Science at the University of the Andes officially opened its programme in 1968. It was the first political science department to be set up in Colombia and one of the pioneers in Latin America. According to the university’s rector at the time, Ramón de Zubiría, the aim was to respond to an “imperative need to disseminate in Colombia, as throughout Latin America, the fundamental ideas of political, economic and social democracy”. Given the country’s need to understand the political context of social phenomena, the department has emphasised since its creation that research work is a complement to the teacher’s duties. This effort has resulted in a range of publications on topics relating to electoral behaviour, the structure of political power, the decision-making process, the state, political parties and international politics. The department is now a leading department for teaching and research in the country, and collaborates with the Centre interdisciplinaire d’études du développement (CIDER) and the Centre d’études du développement économique (CEDE). Since its foundation, research on political science at the University of the Andes has remained active in the political and academic debate, participating in such important moments for the country as the Seventh Ballot movement, the subsequent Constituent Assembly of 1991 and the peace processes with the FARC and ELN guerrillas.

Misak University

The Ala Kusreik Ya Misak university is located in the village of Santiago, in the ancestral territory of Misak, in the municipality of Silvia, in the north-east of the department of Cauca, at an altitude of 2,550 metres above sea level. It is an autonomous educational establishment set up in 2010 by the community of the Guambia indigenous reserve. Its project is part of the Misak people’s struggle to recover their historical memory, to fight against epistemic injustice, to contribute to the process of self-recognition of their own knowledge and to propose solutions based on ancestral knowledge to the problems of contemporary societies. The University’s programme is structured around four themes: autonomous economy, autonomous administration, socio-political organisation and major rights and duties. Courses are organised according to the needs of the territory and the community that inhabits it, and the dialogue of knowledge with other traditions is encouraged. Misak University is based on a project to transmit knowledge and research with the aim of providing a complete education for the individual by putting into practice ancestral principles and ethical, moral, political and cultural values, through an academic programme of a high scientific level. It offers an alternative to conventional urban universities. Focused on training young people and members of the Misak community, it opens up its knowledge to non-indigenous populations who share and are close to the vision of intellectual and spiritual training that it defends, thus promoting integration rather than isolation as one of its fundamental objectives.

University of International Integration of Afro-Brazilian Lusophonia

Unilab was set up in 2010 as part of the programme to develop Brazilian public higher education initiated by the Lula/Dilma governments between 2002 and 2016. The aim was to create training and research centres outside the metropolises, in regions and for populations historically neglected by the public authorities. Unilab was created in the countryside of the state of Ceará and in the Recôncavo region of Bahia. In the case of Unilab, the process went hand in hand with an internationalisation movement through the establishment of close South-South cooperation with Portuguese-speaking Africa and East Timor. The aim was to honour the historical debt owed to black peoples, due to Brazil’s slave-owning past and the structural persistence of racism. In this context, the racist, hegemonic, colonial and neo-colonial assumptions that have marked the modernisation of Brazil, including in educational institutions, are the focus of research at Unilab. Unilab is at once in touch with small localities and with the world, with the inside and the outside, with worlds, knowledge and ways of life marginalised in the Global South. In this dual, inverse and complementary movement, two poles of Africana thought are gaining new impetus: pan-Africanism and Afrocentrism no longer refer solely to a movement to return to an idea of Africa or African identity, but are united in the production of African relations with the world and the world’s relations with Africa.

Catholic University of Central Africa

UCAC is a sub-regional institution of higher education which, by combining academic excellence with ethical responsibility, aims to train a new generation of women and men capable of working for the social, political, economic, moral and spiritual rebirth of Africa. Created on 5 July 1989 by the Association des Conférences Épiscopales de la région d’Afrique Centrale (ACERAC), UCAC comprises six countries: Cameroon, Central Africa, Congo, Gabon, Chad and Equatorial Guinea. It has several faculties and grandes écoles, including the Faculty of Philosophy, to which the Public Ethics and Policy Laboratory is attached. In March 2019, the Ethics and Public Policy Laboratory (EthicsLab) was officially created to stimulate ethical reflection on issues of economic, environmental, social and political importance in the Central African public arena, to help build a culture of integrity among the staff of certain professions through training modules and ethics certificates, and to help improve the capacity to evaluate and develop fair public policies in the countries of Central Africa. It is the first research centre in ethics and political theory in Central Africa. Its aim is to rethink African political agentivity in a context where it is compromised by neoliberal proclamations of international aid and even by certain forms of political liberalism that add to the problematic legacy of colonialism.

Seoul National University

Founded in 1946, the SNU is South Korea’s first national university. It has a tradition of defending democracy and peace on the Korean peninsula. Many of its graduates are civil servants occupying key positions in the Korean government. The SNU applies a standard of excellence in teaching, research and public service. The SNU is committed to the creation of a dynamic, internationalised intellectual community of students and academics, with the aim of building the future. At the SNU, EcoPhiloS draws on the skills and work of researchers at the Institute of Latin American Studies, which is Korea’s leading multidisciplinary research institute on the Latin America of yesterday, today and tomorrow through history, politics, economics, society and culture. Launched in 1989 as the Institute of Latin American Studies and renamed SNUILAS in 2008, it has paved the way for Latin American studies in Korea over the past 30 years. Selected as a “Korean Humanitarian Institute” by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, SNUILAS aims to be a world-leading research institute. It is developing by broadening interaction and encouraging cooperation with leading foreign research institutes.

James Carlès Choreographic Centre

Since 1989, the Centre Chorégraphique James Carlès (1,500 students) has been working to establish in Europe an original current of dance and choreography, whose methodological principles and fields of knowledge include the diversity of the world’s choreographic roots and cultures, academic, urban, scenic and social dances, and especially Afro-descendant heritage, with no hierarchy between dances, practices and practitioners. This current of thought is known as transmodern. Transmodernity means seeing and analysing international phenomena in a way that is both global and localised, and therefore genuinely closer to the reality of each society, while at the same time promoting a symmetrical intercultural dialogue that allows the specificity of each culture to emerge. It empowers non-Western cultures to exist in harmony, in opposition to the totalising nature of modernity. The vocational training is recognised by the Ministry of Education and the Centre is state-approved. For over 20 years, it has organised the Dance and Black Continents Festival, associated since 2018 with the Corpus Africana programme supported by the MCEM EuroPhilosophie. The Centre James Carlès works closely with a network of institutions and associations: Tactikollectif, the Laboratoire des Sciences Sociales du Politique (LaSSP), F2SMH – Université Toulouse 3, L’INSA Toulouse, the African film festival AFRICLAP, the Centre Régional des Œuvres Universitaires et Scolaires de Toulouse, the Centres Culturels des Mazades, Altigone Saint-Orens, Espace Renan, the rectorate of the academy of Toulouse.

Lafabri’K dance and choreographic studies centre

Lafabri’K is a private association set up in 2021 (law 1901). It is the successor to the CDEC (Centre de Danse et d’Études Chorégraphiques), founded in 1990 by the world-renowned choreographer Lēnablou. It is located in the heart of a working-class district, at the crossroads of an emerging hybrid Guadeloupean identity: Guadeloupe, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Dominica. It is a Centre Chorégraphique Caribéen (CCC) whose mission is to make available to students, researchers, artists and the general public the endogenous knowledge of the macro-Caribbean, particularly the French-speaking Caribbean (Guadeloupe, Martinique, Guyana) and the resulting scientific work.  The CCC is an “attic” for thinking about the interdisciplinary body (visual arts, dance, music, song, theatre, literature), a backroom for choreographic art on the fringes of the established system. It is, in fact, a “pocket” of resistance, a place of the possible, a place of experimentation, a living laboratory of the ignored, minoritised “We”. It puts bodies in dialogue with all their attachments: physicality, plasticity, musicality, theatricality, orality, transmission, creation, experimentation and reflection. A laboratory for the possibilities of the body in movement, it promotes a network, a lyannaj between art and research. A complex liana is woven with a real porosity between praxis, physicality, the body, the cerebral, thought and analysis. The choreographic centre aims to provide an original anthropological and philosophical reading of Caribbean cultures.

Centre de philosophie du droit de l’Université Catholique de Louvain

The Centre de philosophie du droit (CPDR) is a research unit of the Philosophie et Théorie du Droit (PJTD) division of the institut for interdisciplinary research in the sciences of law at UCLouvain. The core of the collective research carried out at the Centre de Philosophie du Droit concerns the theory of the norm, the theory of social regulation and the theory of governance. This joint research aims to answer a fundamental question: how to understand the operation by which society intends to regulate itself and act upon itself through norms that it deems legitimate. The research is conducted in four specific thematic areas: 1. Philosophy – Theory of the norm – Theory of governance, 2. Common public goods and biodiversity, 3. Fundamental rights, 4. Digital society. The CPDR’s contribution to EcoPhiloS will be made through a seminar mobilising the resources of the PHIGOV theoretical unit (first axis), which explores three main areas of research: 1. The relationship between the procedural theory of the norm and the theory of action. 2. Participatory observation of initiatives that illustrate the emergence of new forms of collective intelligence and new cooperative identities (in this context – which is of particular concern to EcoPhiloS – PHIGOV conducts a range of specific research aimed at evaluating various forms of social intervention and support for social innovation on the basis of its capacity for collective construction of knowledge and innovation). 3. Questions of the theory of the norm and of action from the perspective of a new approach to subjectivity.

STUDY PROGRAMME

SEMESTER 1 – Integration

University of Toulouse 2 – Jean Jaurès (France) – Epistemologies of the body and of the Souths

Teaching takes place in French. Under the distinction “Philosophy”, it combines extra-academic, artistic and activist residencies (ecology and feminism, schools of earth), and transdisciplinary academic seminars (European and Africana philosophies, human and social sciences, gender studies, performing arts). The integration of the incoming cohort takes the form of a one-week retreat in September under the responsibility of the local EcoPhiloS coordinator, Elsa Dorlin, at the Grande Maison in Verfeil-sur-Seye (artists’ residency, activist and festive events, theoretical seminars, introductory research and methodology workshops, etc.). The retreat takes place within an autonomous collective that has been building a way of life based on habitability for fifty years. At the end of October, a week-long choreographic writing residency is being organised at the Scène Nationale de Foix under the supervision of James Carlès (Centre chorégraphique James Carlès) and in collaboration with Lena Blou (Lafabri’K – Centre de danses et d’études chorégraphiques Chorégraphique Caribéen), in preparation for the Festival Danse et Philosophie Corpus Africana (Danse et Continents Noirs) co-organised by UT2J and the James Carlès Centre, with the threefold aim of building a transmodernity, defending cultural rights and decolonialising the arts and thought. The academic pathway will draw on the critical resources of the “Philosophies plurielles contemporaines” Master’s programme, whose courses have been radically redefined under the impetus of the EuroPhilosophie EMJM (creation of teaching units on epistemologies of the South, in African Philosophy, in Art and Philosophy) and the multi-disciplinary Master’s degree in “Psychoanalyse, Philosopie et Economie du Sujet”, created by Guillaume Sibertin-Blanc, currently professor and coordinator of EcoPhiloS at the University of Paris 8, in feminist and race theory and geo-corpo-political epistemology. At the end of the first semester, Léna Blou’s Centre Chorégraphique Caribéen Lafabri’K in Guadeloupe welcomes 3 to 5 students for a two-week residency in early January to learn about Techni’ka and Lawonn, a privileged space for understanding Caribbean thought and paradigms. Following the same principle, the Centre de philosophie du Droit of the Catholic University of Louvain is taking in a contingent of students for a one-week intensive seminar in January.

SEMESTER 2 – Critical Theory

University of Paris 8 Vincennes/Saint-Denis (France) – Critical transfers & heterogeneity of worlds

Teaching takes place in French. It focuses on knowledge of the constellation of critical philosophies that emerged in the 20th century under the term “contemporary French philosophy” and on knowledge of the extra-European migrations of this constellation and its re-problematisation in critical diagnoses of the contemporary world. On this basis, it places at the heart of philosophical creativity past and present polemical scenes, which confront the work of the concept with multiple anamneses and re-historizations. All those that displace it in decentred or polycentric geographies of colonial and postcolonial modernity, which engage it in processes of epistemic transfer and intercultural translation calling for experimentation with new regimes of perception, writing and reading. It aims to produce new intelligibilities on the high-voltage lines where the extractivist, productivist and destructivist tendencies of contemporary capitalism meet the technologies of governing lives and bodies, and the cultural, political and epistemic initiatives that re-singularize modes of thought and existence. The contribution to the teaching, is characterised by an introduction to contemporary debates in the humanities, history and the environment, and by an awareness of the complexity and multiplicity of the textual forms of philosophical practice, its conceptualisation, description and argumentation regimes, its handling of documentary material, and the resources that narrative and fiction, and corporeal, visual and sound semiosis constitute for philosophy. Each module listed below corresponds to several courses and seminars offered by the Paris 8 Philosophy Department, from which the student chooses one. Preparation for the dissertation includes an oral presentation of the project at a “Journée d’études” in May. The Consortium will pay for French and Spanish language courses outside the teaching framework of the programme.

University of Liège (Belgium) – Critical aesthetics & politics of equality

Teaching takes place in French. Rooted in the critical tradition, it is based on the idea that the problems and concepts of philosophy must be considered from the perspective of the materialities that have contributed to their emergence: socio-historical situations, political conflicts, aesthetic or scientific transformations. It argues that, in alliance with other forms of knowledge (including knowledge of experience and struggle), the ontological, epistemological, political and ethical elaborations of philosophy have transformative power, in support of the quest for plural, fairer and less destructive forms of life and being-in-the-world. It is transdisciplinary, combining teaching from the Performing Arts Masters and the Inter-University Masters in Political Philosophy and Theory. It applies Critical Theory (the Frankfurt School and its heirs in emancipation theory) to the intelligibility of artistic creation. Firstly, it introduces the theoretical analysis of political documentary (militant, committed, socio-political criticism, etc.), and secondly, it deals with the uses of the concept of artistic elitism and its problematic repositioning by the heirs of the Frankfurt School. Generally speaking, the teaching focuses on the regimes of inequality and discrimination, and the ideologies that legitimise them, on the way in which inequalities of class, gender and race are articulated. It deals with the institutional policies put in place to reproduce and/or combat them. A seminar specific to EcoPhiloS has been set up, bringing together all the teaching and research staff around a guest scholar, with a particular focus on the sensitive materialities and devices that condition the conduct of research. A French language reinforcement course is included in the programme. The Consortium will pay for Spanish language courses outside the teaching framework of the programme.

SEMESTER 3 – Research-Action-Participation

Arctic University of Norway – Climate justice, democracy & gender equality

Teaching takes place in English. It focuses on the impact of empirical science on the policies and governance of major societal challenges such as climate change, democratic deficits and gender equality. It aims to strengthen this impact through the training and transmission of conceptual and argumentative tools that enable the contribution of the empirical sciences to be organised in an innovative way and new discourses to be constructed that can influence public policy. Its main aim is to bridge the gap between academic philosophy and society, thereby strengthening its contribution to solving major societal problems. The methods used are those of applied philosophy and practical philosophy, in both analytic and continental philosophy. Feminist theory is used to address issues such as sexual harassment, the equality of sexual minorities, discrimination in working life, the preconditions for equal opportunities in democratic participation, as well as issues of sustainable development and global justice, insofar as feminist theory can help to address them. The approach of contemporary political philosophy emphasises different and competing conceptions of freedom and autonomy, equality, justice and social, political and economic rights. Issues relating to global climate change are approached from the perspective of a principle of justice and responsibility.

University of the Andes & Misak University (Colombia) – Transition processes & Latin American critical thinking

Teaching takes place in Spanish. The coordinator and several teachers are French-speaking. The study programme has two main axes. The first focuses on the revalorisation and discovery of Latin American critical thought through a contextualised interpretation of the continent’s intellectual history. The second axis makes visible the Latin American alternatives that are likely to transform the causes that generate injustice. By working along these lines, the programme contributes to repositioning the Latin American historical subject as a historical-epistemic agent, to shaping critical thinking that recognises the importance of epistemic pluralism, and to training in the practice of a philosophy that is alive and constructed with people, able to engage in contextualised dialogues between different traditions through the use of qualitative and participatory research methodologies. Students who spend a semester at the Universidad de los Andes spend a research period at Misak University. They must first present a project relevant to the Misak community, to which their work will be presented. The Misak University educational programme is organised in the form of a “minga” (collective work based on a principle of reciprocity) along four strands: listening (the voice of the elders (shures), seeing (going beyond the obvious to grasp the dynamics of the territory), thinking (the usup as winding and unwinding in the spaces of life and in the coming and going of time) and doing (building what is dreamed of). The duration of this stay can vary between 4 and 8 weeks. It takes place in June and July before Semester 3, after the end of courses at the European universities. After this stay, students follow courses at the Universidad de los Andes (16 weeks) from August to December. During this semester, students must enrol in two compulsory modules, Latin American Critical Thinking and Research Methods for an Ecopolitics of Knowledge, as well as in a module of their choice related to Latin American critical thinking. The stay at Misak University will be validated by a certificate of attendance issued by the university of the Andes.

University of International Integration and Afro-Brazilian Lusophony (Brazil) – Afropolitan humanities & dancing philosophies

Teaching takes place in Portuguese. The coordinators and several teachers are French-speaking. The course is divided into two interdependent phases: the first, known as the Palabre of the humanities (inspired by the African “palabre”, in the sense of using the spoken word to create a collective space for reflection, dialogue and decision-making), consists of a series of meetings, discussions and the collective production of knowledge outside the university, involving both teachers and students. It involves teachers and students from the research groups involved in the course (the Latin American Association for Intercultural Philosophy, the Ecosophy and Transversality group, the AnDanças programme, the Afropolitan Translation Workshop), as well as social actors, artivists, masters of knowledge, from traditional communities, associations, art groups and social movements that are partners of UNILAB (Terreiro Mukombogire Dya Nzambi, Instituto Nzinga de Estudos DA Copoeira Angola and Tradições Educativas Banto no Brasil). Territories and collectives (human, vegetable, animal, spirit, hybrid) will be the focus of participants’ interest and their reflections/actions. The aim will be to experiment with the knowledge and practices of the collectives that will host the EcoPhiloS students. Constantly in touch with the specific problems of the communities, linked to their permanent confrontation with the monocultural destructivist hegemony of the epistemologically and economically dominant models in Brazil, the Palabre will make it possible to establish a porosity between the university and its outside with a view to questioning the academy form of university research and promoting what UNILAB conceives as a “university of the outside”. At the end of the cycleof the Palabres, students will take part in a Ludatoire under the title “Philosophez, dansez!” to share and extend the experiences gained during the Palabre. The Ludatoire will be held in the physical space of the university, where the introduction of rhythms, polyphonies and gestures will set the scene for thinking about the philosophies of the Global South in workshops and seminars that will bring together Unilab researchers, guest researchers, teachers and students from Unilab and the region’s universities, and participants from the Recôncavo Baiano region. These workshops and seminars will be moments of powerful theorising and theoretical performances. Modernity has turned the university into just another work and production space, eliminating the playful and affective dimension present in every thought experience, every way of housing, every way of living and establishing relationships. The Ludatoire and the cycle of the Palabres propose to reactivate these abolished dimensions. UNILAB’s Institut of Humanities and Literature will issue a certificate at the end of the course.

Catholic University of Central Africa (Cameroon) – Normative ethics and justice

Teaching takes place in French. The training programme is structured around three axes: an inaugural colloquium, a series of seminars on normative and applied African ethics, and a final thematic course in the form of an Ethics weekend. The inaugural two-day conference will be held at the beginning of the semester and will have two components. The first, essentially scientific, will focus on a theme related to questions of African ethics and their application to issues of the body. The second, essentially practical and pedagogical, will consist of an exchange between the students and the academic staff associated with the EcoPhiloS training programme, not only to present in detail to the students the various facets of the pedagogical programme and formulate their expectations, but also to listen to them and respond to their questions and concerns. The conference will be held on one of the UCAC campuses. The African normative and applied ethics seminars will form the backbone of the academic programme, which will consist of two introductory seminars and five practical seminars. Structured around lectures and two levels of application, they will address questions of African ethics and the problematic of the body in the African context in relation to EthicsLab’s five main scientific areas: health, education, politics, economics (business) and the environment. Each seminar will be led by a duo consisting of a philosopher expert in applied ethics in one of EthicsLab’s areas and a non-academic professional in the field concerned. Some of the teaching will take place off-campus. The 2-3 day Ethics Weekend will be held at the end of the semester in a rural community. It will provide an opportunity for a series of discursive ethics activities (ethical dilemmas in an African context) and games (ethics excursion) in a context where both the academic staff associated with EcoPhiloS and local rural community leaders (traditional chief, patriarch) will be involved. The latter will be invited to share with the students their experience in specific areas of community life, such as conflict resolution, nature conservation, hospitality and many others. Organised by the students themselves, it will take the form of a study-recreation break, with talks by guest speakers, tourism and informal discussions.

Seoul National University (South Korea) – Postcolonialism and capitalism

Teaching takes place in English. Several teachers are French- and Spanish-speaking. The teaching focuses on East Asian variations and transformations of the European philosophical tradition. Epistemological questions about the relationship with the West have historically revolved around two aporias. 1) The production of knowledge cannot break with the reproduction of Eurocentrism, even if it aims to create knowledge critical of Eurocentrism: all epistemological questions revolve around the West. 2) The more South Korean capitalism develops, escaping economic, military and geopolitical inferiority on a global scale, the more the need for critical post(de)colonial knowledge disappears. Consequently, South Korean decolonisation finds the ultimate solution to these aporias in the infinite growth of capitalism. In order to introduce this problematic, the course proposes to create a space in which South Korean teachers and European and extra-European students question the very notion of knowledge and its transformation in the critical perspective historically formed in East Asia. The teaching is divided into two axes. The subject of the first axis is the modern history of South Korea as well as that of China and Japan, insofar as this fundamental historical knowledge is necessary for non-Asian students; the second axis concerns the critical theory of Western postcolonialisms, which will enable participants to discuss East Asian variations of Western knowledge. Group readings of texts of counter-anthropological and postcolonial importance, produced in French-speaking and Anglo-Saxon cultures. The aim of the course is the creation of an international space that will enable South Korean teachers and students of the Erasmus Mundus Master to discuss, through knowledge of social movements and popular culture in South Korea and the reading of French and English texts in postcolonial studies, the European intellectual tradition from an East Asian perspective.

SEMESTER 4 – Dissertation writing and presentation

University of Toulouse 2 – Jean Jaures

In the fourth semester, the UT2J welcomes students who wish to be co-supervised by a teacher-researcher involved on her/his site in the first semester’s teaching programme. The fourth semester is dedicated to writing the dissertation. During this final semester, first and second year EcoPhiloS students are brought together in the same seminar to share experiences and create post-training bonds. The course concludes with a three-day residency in Verfeil-sur-Seye, where the work is presented and post-training follow-up (professionalisation, alumni) takes place. The thesis is defended in front of a jury made up of the thesis supervisor at UT2J and the co-supervisor in the R.A.P. place of the third semester.

University of Paris 8 Vincennes/Saint-Denis (France)

Support for writing the dissertation is organised through a seminar designed to raise awareness of the multiplicity and complexity of the ways in which philosophical texts are written. The dissertation is defended publicly in front of two teacher-researchers from the department and the teacher from the third semester in the “Recherche-Action-Participation” place who co-supervised the dissertation. It is also presented at a study and restitution day in May.

University of Liège (Belgium)

The semester is essentially devoted to preparing and defending the final dissertation in front of a jury which includes a co-supervisor from the R.A.P. place as well as the statutory members of the University of Liège. The dissertation is written in conjunction with participation in a course given over three days, in the form of various workshops, to which people from outside the university who are involved in associative or militant activities are invited. During the session, they explain or put into practice their activities with the students. Group activities are offered in the evenings. The course is run by a multi-disciplinary team (a series of motivated young researchers, PhD students or post-docs in philosophy, arts and communication sciences, modern literature).

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS 2024 : See application forms here

For more detailed information on the scholarships, the selection procedure and criteria, please CLIC HERE.

The application form will be put online on 20 December 2023 for the selection of around twelf scholarship students admitted to the 2024-2026 course.

ATTENTION:

The participation in the EcoPhiloS programme of the candidates admitted by the Consortium in April 2024, as well as the award of the 2024-2026 student scholarships, is conditioned by the selection and funding of the Erasmus Mundus EcoPhiloS project once the application which will be submitted by the EcoPhiloS Consortium to the European Commission (EACEA) as part of the Erasmus Mundus Joint Masters 2024 call for applications. In case of failure of the Consortium’s application to the European Union, the EcoPhiloS project will be abandoned.   

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