CAMS: presentation (English version)

Welcome to the web site cams.ehess.fr of the Centre d’analyse et de mathématique sociales (CAMS, CNRS-EHESS).

Locate us:
CAMS premises are at EHESS, 54, boulevard Raspail, 75006 Paris, 4th floor, offices A4-20 to A4-31.
Secretariat: tel. (33-1) 49 54 20 42, (33-1) 49 54 25 53.

On this page: presentation, logos, history, publications.

News: Join us! See the open calls for postdoctoral positions (CNRS and FSMP)

CAMS presentation

The Centre for social analysis and mathematics (Centre d’analyse et de mathématique sociales, CAMS) is a mixed EHESS – CNRS research unit (UMR 8557). As a unit of the CNRS, CAMS is attached, on a principal basis, to the Institute of Human and Social Sciences (InSHS), and, on a secondary basis, to the Institute for Mathematical Sciences and their Interactions (INSMI) and the Institute for Information Sciences and their Interactions (INS2I). As one of the seven mathematics units of PSL University, CAMS contributes to the management of the PSL-maths programme, and is one of the units federated by the Fondation Sciences Mathématiques de Paris (FSMP). CAMS is hosted (premises and website) by the EHESS, and depends on the CNRS for its financial management.

CAMS is a resolutely multidisciplinary unit: its faculty members come from various fields (mathematics, computer science, physics, economics, anthropology, geography…), and have acquired and developed skills at the interfaces. CAMS occupies an original place in the research landscape in France, with the articulation between social sciences on the one hand, and mathematics, computer science, and theoretical physics on the other. As Centre of the EHESS and as a mixed unit of the CNRS, CAMS has a double ambition: to participate in international mathematical research at the highest level in the fields of competence in which it has acquired notoriety, and to fully fulfil its role of innovation, dissemination and transition both from mathematics and computer science to the social sciences and, conversely, of original mathematical problematization of questions coming from the social sciences.

The Centre’s research projects concern on the one hand fundamental mathematics (as in non-linear partial differential equations and discrete mathematics) or theoretical computing, and on the other hand modelling in the social sciences, with the development of new models (combinatorial, probabilistic, dynamic, computer) to reveal hidden structures. The subjects cover a broad spectrum of human and social science fields that lend themselves to formalisation: representation of collective behaviour, geography, demography, linguistics, economics, financial markets, risk management, sustainable development, including the dimensions of political choices, etc. Research at CAMS has also opened up to modelling in biology, particularly in ecology and neuroscience, and more broadly in cognitive sciences. The approaches used are of great variety, mobilizing rigorous mathematical methods, statistical physics or theoretical computing, computer simulation, with an important axis around the « complex systems » approach combining mathematical analysis, simulation, and analysis of large databases (« big data »). Finally, CAMS is a place for epistemological and historical debates on mathematical praxeology.

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