Paris Seine Graduate School of Humanities Creation Heritage (PSGS-HCH), award winner of the third programme (PIA3)- (“Investments for the future”), groups together Research and teaching departments in the Human and Social Sciences Cergy-Pontoise University and with four schools active in the field of creation and heritage: l’école nationale supérieure d’architecture de Versailles (ENSAV) –(National School of Architecture of Versailles), l’école nationale supérieure d’arts de Paris-Cergy (ENSAPC) – (Higher National School of Art of Paris , Cergy) , l’école nationale supérieure de paysage de Versailles (ENSP)- (Higher National School of Landscape of Versailles) and l’Institut national du patrimoine (INP)- National Institute of Cultural Heritage), all are members of the « fondation des sciences du patrimoine » – (Foundation for cultural heritage sciences).

Research trough project

Backed by the Comue (Communauté d’universités et établissements) Paris Seine University, the Graduate school will welcome the first students  at the beginning of the upcoming academic year to follow a practice-led doctoral degree.

Practice-led research aims to integrate practice (creation, design, conservation-restoration, curation …) into the research process, based on the belief that practice is one channel to produce knowledge, that knowledge should be generated by practice and through practice. It is all about imagining a research process in which practice is the driving force, a source of both the questions and the findings of the research.

Doctoral degree programme at the INP

Conservation-restoration of cultural heritage

The practice-led PhD in conservation-restoration of cultural heritage is a professional research experience that is intrinsically linked to the practice of conservation-restoration.  Analysis and results implementation,  reflexivity concerning this practice, the invention or construction of  know-how, technology, or in a broader sense, tools, conceptual or methodological, which are at the centre of this doctoral degree, are today absent from the disciplinary field of conversation-restoration.

This doctoral degree is complementary and not in concurrence to the academic PhD already existing, whose topics are related to the history of restoration, technical art history or material sciences. It is awaited by conservation-restoration professionals and also by other stakeholders in heritage policy. It it thus mandatory to practice conservation-restoration to apply.

Contact: Olivier Zeder - Olivier Zeder(at)inp.fr

Heritage studies

For the cultural heritage curator, a practice-led doctoral degree  should generate new knowledge, as much in the basic disciplines that serve as a reference in the expertise of cultural heritage (in particular history, history of art, archaeology, history of  science and technology) as in the technical disciplines that are implemented in the practice of cultural heritage (in particular museology, archival heritage, methods of analysis and description of  movable and immovable heritage, along with archaeological heritage).

The doctoral degree is focused on a cultural heritage project that could be, for example, the development of a new scientific and cultural project, the design and completion of new display of permanent collections, the treatment and presentation choices of an archival collection, the analysis and description of a series of movable objects or, following an archaeological dig. 

Contact : Christian Hottin - christian.hottin(at)inp.fr