Anne-Claire Defossez Didier Fassin

Born in 1956 in Zweibrücken, Germany, Anne-Claire Defossez is a sociologist. She is a research fellow at theInstitute for Advanced Study, Princeton.

As a research assistant at the Institut des Hautes Études d’Amérique Latine, she first conducted research on street children in Colombia as part of a former Orstom project, and on women’s health in Ecuador as part of an Inserm program. She then worked as a consultant in the fields of social policy, education and employment for local authorities, French ministries and the European Union, before holding senior management positions in two major cities in the Paris region, with particular responsibility for cultural policy and international cooperation. Since joining the Institute for Advanced Study, she has been conducting research on women and politics in France. She co-edited the book Mujeres de los Andes.

 

Born in 1955 in Juvisy-sur-Orge, Didier Fassin is a physician and anthropologist. Professor at theInstitute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and Director of Studies at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales, he holds the annual Chair in Public Health at the Collège de France.

After working as a senior physician in internal medicine, he turned to the social sciences, conducting research on urban medicine in Senegal, women’s health in Ecuador, AIDS in South Africa and humanitarian aid from an international perspective. His most recent work focuses on the police, justice and prisons in France. He has given the Tanner Lectures on Punishment and the Adorno Lectures on the Politics of Life. Recipient of the Gold Medal for Anthropology at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Nomis Distinguished Scientist Award for a program entitled Global Crisis, he gave his inaugural lecture at the Collège de France on the inequality of life. A former vice-president of Médecins sans Frontières, he chairs Comede, the Committee for the Health of Exiles. He recently published Punish. A contemporary passion, La Vie mode d’emploi reviews and Death of a traveler. A counter-inquiry .

The project for which they are benefiting from a writing residency at Villa Medici focuses on migration along the French-Italian border in the Alps, in particular the experience of those who cross it at the provisional end of several years’ travel, and the tensions between local solidarity and repressive policies.