General information
The CNRS (National Scientific Research Centre/ Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) is a state-funded scientific organization with a legal identity and financial autonomy under the authority of the French Ministry of Education and Research.
The general aims of the CNRS are: to evaluate and carry out any research in the interest of the advancement of science and France’s economic, social and cultural progress; to contribute to the application and valorisation of the results of this research; to contribute to training for and through research; to set national scientific policy in light of current and future trends in the national and international scientific context.
To fulfil these aims, the CNRS employs at present 12 000 research scientists and 14 000 engineers, technicians and administrative personnel. Its 1 300 research units spread all over France are active in every known field of science. The seven CNRS scientific departments and two institutes encompass virtually all fields of knowledge: Mathematics and Physics, Nuclear and Particle Physics, Sciences of the Universe, Engineering Sciences, Chemical Sciences, Life Sciences, Humanities and Social Sciences.
For the present applications, eight research units mainly in the Humanities and Social Sciences department collaborate:
- CMH [UMR 8097 CNRS-EHESS in Paris and University of Caen] Centre Maurice Halbwachs;
- ECONOMIX [UMR 7166 CNRS-University of Paris 10 in Nanterre];
- GRECSTA [UMR 2773 CNRS-INSEE] (Research Group for Economics and Statistics);
- GREQAM [UMR 8598 CNRS-EHESS-University of Aix-Marseille] (Research Center in Quantitative Economics);
- IREDU [UMR 5225 CNRS-University of Bourgogne] (Research Institute in Economics and Education);
- LEST [UMR 6123 CNRS-University of Aix-Marseille] (Laboratory of Labour Sociology and Economics);
- OSC [UMR 7049 CNRS-FNSP] (Center for the study of Social Change);
- THEMA [UMR 8184 CNRS- University of Paris 10 in Cergy-Pontoise] (Economic Theory, modelling and application).
International networks and collaboration
The CNRS has developed an active policy of scientific collaborations with each of the national research institutions from the European Union and other countries. These policies have allowed developing numerous participations to international networks. In particular, the French participants to this application are responsible for the French participation in the European Social Survey, funded via the European Commission’s 5th Framework Programme; to the International Social Survey, a continuing annual programme of cross-national collaboration on surveys covering topics important for social science research (43 countries are now members of the ISSP); to the Comparative Charting of Social Change research network, an international group developing comparative analysis of macrosocial change in Western and former socialist countries (recently, Yannick Lemel co-edited a McGill-Queen’s University Press volume on Changing Structures of Inequality: a Comparative Perspective). The French team has a great deal of experience using other European data sources as well. They have broad experience in the analysis of the results from the Eurobarometer and European Values and Attitudes survey; in the analysis of the European Labour Force, the Time Use and the Family Budget surveys data. Finally, the CNRS has been a member of major research programmes under the Fifth Framework including the EPUSE and the CHANGEQUAL programmes.
