Alert to global challenges and conscious of the necessity to contribute to a collective reflection about contemporary society, the University of Corsica regularly offers research chairs to allow enrichment knowledge by analyzing and comparing valuable points of view. Mesology, the social and solidarity economic sectors, and Mediterranean culture are topics that encourage rich exchanges among researchers, theorists and active scholars.
Paul Valery was a citizen of the Mediterranean, by origin and conviction. He defended the idea that the Mediterranean, a place of vibrant and unhindered freethinking, has a civilizing role which has to be protected. Today, growing numbers of political analysts, economists, philosophers and sociologists find new arguments in his writings to support a global and sustainable vision of “the Mediterranean experience”, in opposition to the theory of inevitable conflicts between distressed, clashing civilizations. This “inner sea – security zone” is one of separation as well as communication, a “fermented essence” in its multiple paradoxes, open to all possibilities.
As multiple and mobile as the Mediterranean spirit, this research chair is intended to stimulate new exchanges of ideas, languages, traditions and knowledge, and to contribute to the preservation of a humanitarian heritage, the vital substance of an inquisitive intellectual community, based on the complex equilibrium between thought and action. Since antiquity, the Mediterranean has been a space of circulation and renewed skills, and this professorship calls upon noteworthy Mediterranean intellectuals to redefine the dynamic diversity of intellectual, artistic and social heritage, in a humanist tradition.
The University of Corsica’s first professorship is entitled “Innovation and Territorial Development”. Now, when territorial management and urban planning address crucial problems in Corsica, The University of Corsica is there to contribute to the reflection regarding landscape, architecture, and urban planning. The double ambition of this research chair is to weigh the ties between society and environment, by assuming the economic, technological and symbolic dimensions of today’s society, and to generate a dialogue between theory and field research.
Director of the Paris École des Hautes Études in Social Sciences and an associate professor in the Paris-La-Villette Graduate School of Architecture, Augustin Berque, an internationally known and respected philosopher, geographer, and oriental scholar occupied this chair and its scientific responsibilities.
The Social and Solidarity economy plays a major role in contemporary financial systems. In Corsica, as in the rest of France, its contribution to the GDP is estimated between 8% and 10%. The same rates are used to estimate the value of national and regional salaried employment. In many business sectors, the SSE organizations participate actively to satisfy demands. Far from working against the public and private sectors, the SSE completes their actions and contributes to the greater well-being of the population. Through the SSE, economic performance and social cohesion work together. But this dual economic and social utility is still insufficiently known and recognized, hence the creation of a “Solidarity and Innovations” chair.
As part of a mutualized scientific policy dated 2014, The University of Corsica and the Inserm (National Institute of the Health and Medical Research) have established a mixed chair “Research on infectious diseases of viral origin with genetic and epidemiological approaches in an insular context”.
In spite of recent progress, infectious diseases always remain a major problem in public health. The research program will study the genetic variability of pathogenic agents correlated to human populations in relation to epidemiological studies of infectious diseases. This research is particularly important for a better understanding of the complex relationship between pathogen and host, and for the development of monitoring tools to control the spread of epidemics.
