TRIBUTE
TO MICHEL CALLON
This spring and fall of 2026, the Center for the Sociology of Innovation at Mines Paris-PSL will be organizing three events in tribute to Michel Callon, who passed away on July 28, 2025. Each event will highlight a different facet of his remarkably rich academic career, during which he consistently engaged in active dialogue with key figures in the social, political, and economic spheres.
Wednesday, June 17, 2026 — 5:30 p.m.
Mines Paris – PSL
Michel Callon, A Committed Advocate
for Research Policies
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In tribute to Michel Callon, who passed away on July 28, 2025, the Center for the Sociology of Innovation at Mines Paris – PSL is organizing a series of events. We are pleased to invite you to this inaugural event, dedicated to honoring the memory of a leading researcher and a dedicated advocate for public research policy.
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Speakers Four prominent figures will discuss his work and influence:
Chair
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Registration is free and required. Please fill out this form.
Download the program
Contact: Florence Paterson
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About Michel Callon
Throughout his career, Michel Callon sought to contribute to the transformation of the world by putting the concepts, tools, and analyses developed in his research to the test. This immersion in concrete realities, in turn, enriched his thinking and research. For several decades, the development and impact of research policies has been a central focus of his work. Initially, he worked on major research programs launched in the 1970s by the French Directorate General for Scientific and Technical Research, including programs focused on electric vehicles and macromolecular chemistry. His notable work earned him the position of deputy general rapporteur, alongside Philippe Lazar (the former CEO of INSERM), at the national symposium on research and technology that paved the way for the first research law introduced in 1982 by Jean-Pierre Chevènement, who was then the Minister of Research under President François Mitterrand. He then helped develop tools that enabled the detailed mapping of research fields and how they evolved in response to public policy. He has assisted several public and private organizations in understanding and evaluating their own research initiatives. |
Early on, he advocated for the involvement of all parties in defining research policies through the concept of a “hybrid forum,” developed in the 1990s. His efforts to open up the discussion on research policies were notably reflected in his active participation in the collective expertise group mandated by the European Commission on the governance of science. He made a lasting legacy in the academic realm by serving as the editor-in-chief of Research Policy, the preeminent international journal on research policy, from 1995 to 2010. For this tribute, we have invited four prominent figures who collaborated with Michel Callon in various capacities and whose own trajectories have been shaped by this intersection of research and action. We will ask them to share how his work has fueled their thinking and practice and the insights it offers for analyzing contemporary shifts in research policy.
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