Presentation
The advantages of an interdisciplinary approach
To its doctoral researchers, who already possess solid academic training, good research experience and various initial training, the SHA program offers the opportunity to familiarize oneself with other disciplinary approaches and other perspectives, thereby preparing them for a contemporary world marked by multidisciplinary teamwork and by the increasing need for integrated approaches.
Room for the unexpected in social sciences
The SHA program is well suited for the researcher whose scientific intuition or doctoral project doesn't frame well within the traditional paths of disciplinarity. It welcomes researchers from a multitude of scientific horizons, united solely by their quest in social sciences.
Atypical and innovative, this doctoral program constitutes a protected space for the unexpected, for research that dares to leave the beaten path and for critical perspectives. While harmonizing with the new profusion of thematic graduate programs —on health, on the environment, etc.—, the SHA program also anticipates and oversees them, already possessing 20 years of expertise in interdisciplinary research.
An expertise in increasing demand: interdisciplinarity
The university tradition normally requires of a doctoral candidate that he contributes "to the advancement of his discipline". However, it is possible, on the side, to pursue other doctoral objectives: that of contributing to the research of useful answers, regardless of the disciplinary affiliation of the knowledge produced, or that of appropriating all useful knowledge, regardless of the disciplinary boundaries that surround it.
Within this program, interdisciplinarity does not compete with disciplinarity, since it requires the latter to exist: it constitutes a new expertise within it, rising and complementary, centered on the creation of useful connections between otherwise isolated knowledge. The demand for interdisciplinarity is strong and it emerges from a multitude of environments, which is why the University of Montreal has officially made it an institutional priority.
An applied science
A doctoral project at SHA implies the desire to lead research capable of benefiting action, whatever it may be—to that of field professionals, to that of groups and individuals calling on science, to all human intervention that one would want to enlighten through knowledge.
The professors
- Gilles Bibeau, anthropology
- Bryn Williams-Jones, social and preventive medicine
- Béatrice Godard, social and preventive medicine
- Marianne Kempeneers, sociology
- Violaine Lemay, law
- Jean Poupart, criminology
- Pierre-Joseph Ulysse, social service
- Daniel Weinstock, philosophy
The graduates
Since its institution, the program has helped train dozens of doctoral graduates who today are working in areas of research, intervention and management. Graduates are active in universities, in public and parapublic sectors, but also in the private sphere, both nationally and internationally.
Comments and information : phdsha@umontreal.ca
Update
12-nov-14
Doctorat en sciences humaines appliquées - FAS / Université de Montréal