Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Citizenship and Minorities

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Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Citizenship and Minorities

The Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Citizenship and Minorities (CIRCEM) is a convergence centre for researchers at the University of Ottawa concerned with citizenship and minority issues.

About the Centre

The Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Citizenship and Minorities (CIRCEM) is one of the major research centers of the Faculty of Social Sciences and the University of Ottawa. The Centre is a hub for researchers concerned with citizenship and minority issues. It has emerged as a dynamic and plural environment whose priority is to promote exchanges and interdisciplinary research within a francophone intellectual space. CIRCEM thus closely merges research and intellectual life.

The Centre carries out a number of subsidized research projects in partnership with other established chairs and research centres of national and international standing. Each of the research axes puts together its own research team that produce new data, innovative interpretations and cutting-edge analyses. Through the research and activities of its directors, CIRCEM reaches over fifty graduate students on a daily basis. The Centre also hosts guest researchers, post-doctoral fellows and doctoral interns from Canada and abroad who wish to undertake a research stay at the University of Ottawa. Its varied and stimulating activities are an important point of production and animation of intellectual life for academic circles here and elsewhere.

Discover the CIRCEM podcasts

The CIRCEM podcasts aim to promote interdisciplinary research on democratic citizenship and minority groups, based on the intellectual tradition of the Francophone world.

CIRCEM podcasts (In French Only)

Research areas

The Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Citizenship and Minorities mission is to offer to the university community an intellectual research environment in the French language. The Centre also aims to provide a place for researchers from Canada and abroad who wish to undertake a research stay at the University of Ottawa.

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Democracy, Political and Social Thought

At a time when Western political thought tends to approach issues of democracy, citizenship and pluralism from the angle of legal and political theory, this research area emphasizes the study of more substantial aspects of political modernity

Biopolitical issues and minority groups

This research axis focuses on issues tied to a citizen’s right to dispose of his/her life and body, and to the forms of life and death that trouble existing social, political and economic norms.

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Ethics of Care

Since its creation in moral psychology in the 1980s, the ethics of care has been greatly politicised and has become a field of study in and of itself - a field resolutely interdisciplinary that marries sociology of work, gender studies, political science, philosophy, psychology, nursing, and literature.

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Populism, Diversity, and Social Cohesion

Populism is one of the most debated concepts of our time, representing a central tension between popular sovereignty and the rule of law, as well as social cohesion and ethno-cultural diversity. This study explores the complex and multifaceted relationship between populism and liberal democracy in the 21st century.

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Participation and Citizenship

As some bewail civic disengagement and others question representative democracy, analyzing people’s workaday social and political practices becomes a major issue in order to meet the challenge of a social life that integrates concerns for common goods.

Francophone spaces and transformations

This research area focuses on francophone spaces, not only in the geographical and linguistic sense, but also the political, cultural, affective and imaginary.