What is Crisis-Lab

The Sciences Po Crisis-Lab is a research, experimental and training hub in the human and social sciences working on adaptation to critical situations. Inspired by the principles of the Lab Schools founded in the 1960s by John Dewey, it seeks to identify innovative ideas, to experiment them on the ground, and then draw lessons for action and learning.

Crisis-Lab is an autonomous space driven by researchers in the human and social sciences with a long experience in studying crisises, working in close collaboration with crisis professionals, primarily in public organizations in charge of crisis management, but also in private companies and NGOs.

Crisis-Lab has three main objectives.

• Produce a state of the art in human and social sciences relative to crises. From this, conduct innovative research on cooperation and coordination in critical situations, the organization of expertise and decision-making, the behavior of populations, mobility and immobility issues, the role of technologies, big data and social networks, finally ethical and democratic issues.
• Develop training programs that put self acquisition of knowledge on crises by students at the core of the pedagogical project, by continuously confronting them with the resolution of concrete situations or problems. In parallel, offer training courses leading to a qualification which emphasise the organisational and human dimension of crisis management and apprehend crisis situations from the point of view of social actors.
• To experiment, in the form of simulation exercises of a profoundly renewed format and returns on past crises, different modalities of adaptation to critical situations, taking advantage of the results and reflections engaged in the research component of the Crisis-Lab.