Didier Fassin

Didier is the James D. Wolfensohn Professor of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study of Princeton and Director of Studies at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris. Anthropologist, sociologist and physician, he is the founder of the Interdisciplinary Research Institute for Social Sciences (CNRS – Inserm – EHESS – University Paris North), which he directed from 2007 to 2010. He conducted research in public health in Tunisia and France, and in medical anthropology in Senegal, Congo and Ecuador. More recently, Didier has developed the field of political and moral anthropology, with empirical studies on Aids and memory in South Africa, disaster and aid in Venezuela, immigration and asylum in France, as well as theoretical inquiries on witnessing and testifying in Palestine, social suffering and trauma in France, and the humanitarian reason from a global perspective. Within the program, his fieldwork is concentrated on the police, the prison, and the National Court of Asylum.