Replay: Launch day of the GPR PSL FAn at INHA (24 March 2025)

On 24 March 2025, the launch day for PSL's major research programme Les fabriques de l'antique (FAn) was held in the INHA auditorium. El-Mouhoud Mouhoub, president of PSL, discussed the creation of the GPRs, the successors to the LabEx programmes, and their importance in strengthening interdisciplinarity and uniting the scientific communities at PSL. The three leaders of the PSL FAn GPR (Vincent Eltschinger (EPHE-PSL), Vassa Kontouma (EPHE-PSL), and Andréas Stauder (EPHE-PSL) then presented the institutional architecture of FAn and the objectives of its three areas of research: 1) the construction of time and the various questions it raises: periodisation, modes of historicity, etc.; 2) the construction and representation of antiquity not only in modern and contemporary societies, but also in ancient societies themselves; 3) the linguistic shaping of the world: languages and scripts as historical objects.

A transdisciplinary and comparative programme, the PSL Grand Programme de Recherche (Major Research Programme) ‘Les fabriques de l'antique’ (The Making of Antiquity) " (FAn, 2025-2029) aims to study and analyse the formation of collective identities, cultural memories and regimes of historicity in ancient societies across all cultural areas and periods. FAn thus considers ancient worlds not as the traditional objects of the ‘sciences of Antiquity,’ but as issues of appropriation, construction and successive rewritings motivated by changing contemporaneities (ancient or contemporary) and rooted in concrete material conditions, which are themselves stratified. In a break with Eurocentrism, ancient societies are studied from a global perspective, in their chronological depth and interconnections. Supported by PSL University and led by EPHE - PSL, the ‘Les fabriques de l'antique’ programme brings together scientific forces from six PSL member institutions, twelve laboratories, major Parisian museums, and the network of French schools abroad.

Watch the introductory video on the EPHE-PSL YouTube channel.