The Association of the Friends of the FMSH has been established in 2012, by a team including Michel Wieviorka, the Administrator of the Foundation, Olivier Bouin, then Director of the French Network of Institutes for Advanced Studies (he would also be the Head of the Collège d’études mondiales set up by the Foundation) and Laurent Levi-Strauss, former senior official at UNESCO. The reputed sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein has been in touch for long with Fernand Braudel, and had established at the New York State University a ‘Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economies, Historical System and Civilizations’. He had also praised and defended the FMSH in an opinion piece published in 2008 in the French daily Libération, under the title « Don’t break up the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme ». He accepted to preside over the new Association.

Through its financial contributions, its own initiatives and its members network, the Association supports the scientific activities of the FMSH, in the academic community as well as in the civil society, in France and in the world. In the same spirit, it launches as well its own initiatives, always linked to the fields of research of the Foundation, to its future, and to significant issues of our times.

Since 2018, the Association supports also scholars constrained to exile, due to wars or authoritarian regimes hindering research.

The Association has over a thousand members, in France and in the rest of the world — a testimony to the the diversity of research paths linked to the FMSH and/or to Maison Suger, the residence for foreign scholars attached to the Foundation.

The Association has also Honorary Members, who have been deeply associated with the Foundation activities, or who have joined at a time its International Evaluation Committee or its Scientific Council.

Joining the Association is free, but we call for voluntary financial support, our only source of income, needed for running the association at a minimal cost, for supporting activities related to the Foundation and, as mentioned above, to contribute to initiatives helping scholars in danger.

How the Association is run

The Association policy is defined by the twelve members of the Governing Board. Six of them are elected for a four-year mandate by the General Assembly convened once a year.  Six are proposed by the Governing Board amongst our Honorary members, and subject to the approval of the General Assembly.

The Executive Office of the Board includes three members: a president, a general secretary, a treasurer.