IACCHOS is the UCLouvain’s research institute which joins together 10 research centres in the social sciences. It has more than 230 members, including over 60 academics and 150 PhD students.
The Institute's scientific objective is extensive and is characterized by a variety of scientific approaches, notably those of the following core disciplines: sociology, anthropology, demography, history, didactics, developmental sciences, educational sciences and occupational sciences. In addition to these disciplines, there are also numerous interactions with law, economics, psychology, philosophy, as well as architecture and urban planning, thus providing a real forum for interdisciplinary research on the issue of social change.
This gives rise to many objects of study, ranging from symbolic systems to economic practices in all their diversity, changes in socialization and individualization patterns to population dynamics (fertility, mortality, etc.), analysis of bodily practices to those aimed at investing space, modes of knowledge production (in particular on social networks) to globalization processes, including resistance to the latter at the local level.
In essence, it is a matter of developing a non-reductionist analysis of social change by highlighting the historical depth of contemporary phenomena.