CYAS Cergy

The Institute for Advanced Studies (IAS) was established in 2007 under the auspices of the Université de Cergy-Pontoise (UCP). Its mission is to develop high-level international scientific exchanges and to promote interdisciplinary research projects. In January 2020, UCP merged with the EISTI engineering school and was renamed CY Cergy Paris Université, while IAS became CY Advanced Studies (CYAS). The consortium of the CY Cergy Paris Université and the ESSEC business school was awarded with the Initiative d’excellence label by the French government, and CYAS benefits from the funding provided within that project.

The activities of CYAS are administered through the following programmes:

1. Fellows in residence
2. Fellows in social and human sciences
3. Invited positions
4. Scientific events
5. Thematic months
6. Research in groups
7. Doctoral courses

Within the framework of these programmes, CYAS hosts more than 100 international researchers on an annual basis, including Fulbright fellows and Eutopia-SIF postdocs, with a total duration of more than 80 months. Furthermore, CY AS provides support for the organisation of approximately 50 conferences and workshops each year. The total annual budget of CYAS activities is approximately 1M €.

The institute has a large Auditorium, two fully equipped meeting rooms, one teaching room with a blackboard and camera, and two working rooms with a blackboard. Recording and streaming of all activities is available upon request. The university restaurant, open during the lunch hours, and a number of cafeterias are located in the building across the street and are easily accessible.

The fellows and long-term visitors are provided with comfortable offices, and the eduroam is available throughout the building. The Institute has a residence with spacious apartments, one of which is adapted to PRM.

CY Advanced Studies was conceived as an international and transdisciplinary venue supporting ambitious research project in all disciplines. The CYAS commitments in the social sciences and humanities are coordinated with the Maison de la Recherche SHS (established in 2024 within CY Cergy Paris Université). The research of the latter is mostly concentrated on the following interdisciplinary areas:

Knowledge and societies
Initiatives in this area focus on how knowledge emerges, spreads and evolves in a world in transition — climate change, the fragmentation of contemporary societies, the rise of extremism, institutional transformations, and the development of new information and communication technologies.

Cultural objects and imaginaries
The objective of this axis is to consider, from the angle of actions and feedbacks, transmissions and tensions, all cultural productions at the crossroads of their objects — both tangible and intangible — and the imaginaries they generate and underpin. Furthermore, it examines the epistemology of relationships to cultural objects in the sense of value-bearing objects imagined and constructed for third parties.

Social practices, trends and tensions
This axis aims to examine social practices linked to individual or collective behaviours that, through the prism of the fields of education, cities, media communication and digital spaces, are concerned with the processes of constructing knowledge, citizenship, conflictuality and otherness in social space.