PSL- Research Chair on Beauty studies
The Research Chair on Beauty studies establishes a scientific environment devoted to an interdisciplinary examination of the concept of beauty.
For the researchers, the fundamentally elusive nature of beauty offers a fertile breeding ground for questioning our cultural, civilizational and geographical depictions of beauty.
What is beauty? How is one thing beautiful and another is repellent? What are the scientific and social phenomena behind the distinction we draw between them? What are the institutions that pre-serve, create or reinvent beauty? What will beauty be like in the future, in an increasingly hybrid world? Under what formal conditions can beauty be exemplified in the sciences? Are there invari-ants in beauty, despite its multi-faceted manifestations that thwart any normative definition?
Over years, the sciences and the creative arts will be enlisted to share their input as part of a seminar and lecture series designed to examine every aspect of the complex but fundamental con-cept of beauty. The Chair is led by a scientific steering committee, a scientific coordinator and a pool of young people and researchers. A dissertation prize will be awarded annually to recent re-search on the topic of beauty.
The Chair is thus a centre for research and training, disseminating its findings to a wide audience through seminars, conferences, multimedia projects and publications.
To be kept informed of forthcoming scientific events organised by the Chair, please write to: chaire.beautes@psl.eu