Academics

Digital issues are addressed, both directly and indirectly, in many of the courses taken by students in the Undergraduate College. In particular, in the second year of the Bachelor's program, all Undergraduate College students are required to take the “Digital Cultures” course. The aim of this course is to go beyond our quotidien sense of familiarity with digital technologies and take a critical look at the economic, social, cultural and political transformations that digital technologies are having on our societies. The course explores the different facets of digital culture by decoding the issues and practices of the digital society, and developing specific knowledge and tools. At the crossroads of theory and practice, the course is structured around different modules: an online course, two days of hands-on coding workshops and a collective digital exploration leading to the creation of a website.

For those wishing to deepen their understanding of digital issues, the Undergraduate College offers an interdisciplinary double degree programme combining courses in mathematics, humanities and social sciences: the Bachelor of Arts and Sciences, "Algorithms and Decisions" with UFR Mathematics of Université de Paris. The main focus of this programme is the ways in which our choices, whether individual or collective, are shaped, oriented and sometimes constrained by models and/or sets of instructions that draw on both logic and our everyday lives.

A key component of the core curriculum of the Master’s degree offered by the School of Management and Impact includes Data & Digital Courses articulated around 3 thematic spheres: digital and social sciences; tools, data and analysis; and management tools. The objective of these courses is to:

• Train students (with methods ranging from refresher courses to advanced training) to "speak data", to develop autonomous digital usage and to master the fundamental logical and quantitative elements of data and digital technology
• Enable students to develop a critical mindset with regard to the societal, ethical, legal, strategic and economic challenges of digital and data
• Provide students with professional tools and methods that will be useful for their entry into the job market

The School of Management and Impact also hosts the Good in Tech Chair, in collaboration with Institut Mines-Télécom. 

The Policy Stream: Digital, New Technology and Public Policy proposed by the School of Public Affairs is a unique interdisciplinary programme which allows students to explore all the facets of the digital revolution in public policy.

The School of Public Affairs also runs the Public Policy Incubator, an innovative educational program designed to train students to creatively and collaboratively solve real-world public policy problems.

The School of Public Affairs also hosts the Digital, Governance and Sovereignty Chair.

Within the Master in Economic Law, the Law School offers a specialization in Innovation Law (FR).

The Law School also proposes the Clinic: DIGILAW, whose objective is to train and work with law students to find concrete solutions to practical problems: 

• How can the values and rights needed to sustain democracies and the common good be upheld and ensured in our digital world?
• What is the role of the law in this environment where technologies, infrastructures, big players and users themselves construct normativities beyond the law itself?

DIGILAW involves teams of students and researchers working on action-research projects addressing these issues, designed in collaboration with a range of partners from civil society, public institutions and private actors.

Teaching digital journalism is crucial to the Journalism School. No matter what media students work on (radio, TV, Internet, newspaper), they learn about how to master all the tools and uses of the network to produce desktop and mobile content, including digital culture, data investigation, online editing, live blogging and fact checking, engagement with the audience, video and pictures editing, social media investigations, etc. 

As soon as they start their first year, students are immersed in digital technologies. A whole range of intensive classes, courses and professional workshops give them the opportunity to acquire the specific abilities applying to digital journalism.

More information available here.

The School of Research offers inter-semester courses for doctoral and masters students from different disciplines on digital skills for research (ex. online data collection, webscraping, text-as-data, etc.)

Technology is an area of growing strategic importance to international affairs and a cross-cutting issue that can be applied to examine major global challenges including security, climate change or energy among others. Technology drives innovation, improves efficiency, and enhances connectivity and human exchange at a global scale, but also presents fundamental concerns and ethical dilemmas for our societies, our economies, and our forms of governance and citizenship.

The Paris School of International Affairs (PSIA) has launched a new Master in Technology and Global Affairs in order to prepare students for the digital transition. The programme aims to train students to better understand how artificial intelligence, big data, and cyber security tools work. It also encourages them to explore and analyse the influence of technology on the international order and how it can be effectively governed. In addition, PSIA has also launched a new Technology and Global Affairs Innovation Hub, which is designed to leverage knowledge towards impact and solutions to address tech-related global challenges.

The Group Projects of the Lab is at the heart of the pedagogy of all the Urban School's Masters programmes. Thanks to this original and highly professionalizing module, students respond to a real territorial issue posed by a public, private or associative organization.

For 5 to 9 months (following the master), each team of 4 to 5 students works under the supervision of an academic or professional tutor. Each project concludes with a presentation of the final results to the partner and at the Urban School's day in June each year, organised by our Lab. The Urban School strives to work on all the problems that contemporary societies may encounter in cities and territories, including the accumulation of data and technologies.

The Urban School also hosts the Cities and digital technology Chair.