Hubert Bost and Anne Devulder named Vice Presidents of PSL
The PSL Board of Directors approved two appointments on October 11. Hubert Bost, currently serving as president of the École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE), has been named PSL’s Vice President of Research and Graduate Programs. He will assume his new position on November 1. Anne Devulder, formerly Director of Student Life at ESPCI Paris, has been appointed Vice President of Student Life and Social and Environmental Responsibility, effective today.
Hubert Bost, Vice President of Research and Graduate Programs
Reporting to the President of PSL, the Vice President of Research and Graduate Programs is in charge of drafting and implementing PSL’s strategy for research and graduate-level education, in conjunction with the Education and Research Committee and the Council of Members. PSL aims to build an array of graduate programs that rise above the traditional separation between education and research.
By modeling those programs on international graduate schools, PSL will seek to forge closer ties among its newly restructured master’s-level programs, doctoral study programs and research laboratories. Providing training that is informed by emerging scientific disciplines is a prerequisite for attracting the highest-caliber student body. PSL is currently mobilizing all of its assets toward meeting that objective, so as to establish the institution more firmly among the world’s leading universities.
Holding a Ph.D (docteur ès lettres) from the University of Montpellier, Hubert Bost served as President of EPHE from 2013 to 2018. A specialist in modern history, he taught at Montpellier and also served as Director of the Center for Eighteenth Century Studies at the Université Paul-Valéry from 1999 to 2003. Beginning in 2003, he held the chair in “Protestantism and Culture in Modern Europe, 16th-18th Centuries” in EPHE’s Religious Sciences department, and he was a member of the Laboratoire d’Etudes sur les Monothéismes. He subsequently served as Dean of the Religious Sciences department from 2010-2013.
His research focuses on the history of the Reformation and modern Protestantism and the relationships between religious belief and rational thought among the Huguenot writers of the 17th and 18th centuries in Europe. He is also a specialist in the works of philosopher Pierre Bayle (1647-1706) and the writer La Beaumelle (1726-1773).
During his term as President of EPHE, Dr. Bost has been firmly committed to the collective project of building PSL as an institution, and helped to draft the January 2017 Policy Agreement. He successfully led the vote to have EPHE accepted as a PSL member institution, and has been instrumental in the progress of the Condorcet Campus.
Anne Devulder, Vice President of Student Life and Social and Environmental Responsibility
Reporting to PSL’s President, the Vice President of Student Life and Social and Environmental Responsibility will be in charge of:
- Drafting and implementing PSL’s strategy for student life and campus life, including the areas of student health and accommodations, support for international students and cultural and athletic opportunities;
- Drafting and implementing PSL’s strategy for social and environmental responsibility, including the issues of equal opportunity, diversity, gender equity and sustainability in accordance with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals;
- Directing the Student Life Taskforce and the Social and Environmental Responsibility Taskforce at PSL.
Anne Devulder holds a degree in engineering from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts et Métiers and a Ph.D in materials engineering from the Ecole Centrale Paris, and is a lecturer in materials engineering at ESPCI Paris. As Director of Student Life in ESPCI Paris’s Division of Academic Affairs from 2015 to 2018, she led a variety of CSR initiatives and played a significant role in developing new projects alongside ESPCI students. In particular, she helped to establish the PSL engineering Open House week events, which include PSL’s three engineering schools and partners from the manufacturing sector.
Dr. Devulder was simultaneously in charge of overseeing dual-degree programs at ESPCI as well as student entrepreneurship, and of coordinating science tutoring programs in nursery schools and primary and secondary schools.
Her research has focused on the interaction between biology and the engineering of (living) materials. Her dissertation examined the biological process of bone remodeling and its interaction with the physical laws governing the body. She has also conducted research into the mechanotransduction of bone cells, the interaction between plant physics and biology and collective motion in Escherichia coli bacteria.