Philippe Descola#
Photo: B. Roscot-Pleutin (Le Seuil)
| Membership Number: | 7366 |
| Membership type: | ORDINARY |
| Section: | SOCIAL CHANGE AND SOCIAL THOUGHT |
| Elected: | 2026 |
| Main Country of Residence: | FRANCE |
| Homepage(s): | https://www.college-de-france.fr/fr/chaire/philippe-descola-anthropologie-de-la-nature-chaire-statutaire |
| ORCID: | 0009-0003-0078-3236 |
| Publication Link: | https://www.college-de-france.fr/fr/chaire/philippe-descola-anthropologie-de-la-nature-chaire-statutaire/biography |
Present and Previous Positions
- Professor of Anthropology emeritus at the Collège de France and at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales.
- 2021 (April - June), 2018 (October - November), 2014 - 2015, Visiting Fellow King's College, University of Cambridge
- 2000 - 2019 Professor at the Collège de France
- 1989 - 2019 Professor at the Ecole des hautes Etudes en Sciences sociales.
- 2013 (Fall term) Distinguished Visiting Professor, Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies, University of British Columbia, Vancouver
- 2000 - 2013 Director of the Laboratoire d'Anthropologie sociale (Collège de France - CNRS - Ecole des hautes Etudes en Sciences sociales)
- 2007 - 2008 Fellow, Carl Friedrich von Siemens Stiftung, Munich
Fields of Scholarship
- Ontological pluralism (animism, totemism, analogism, naturalism)
- Environmental anthropology
- Amazonian ethnology (Achuar, Ecuador)
- Anthropology of images and figuration
- Human–nonhuman relations
- Anthropological epistemology
- Comparative anthropology of nature–culture relations
- Political ecology and cosmopolitics
- Ethnographic theory and comparison
- Anthropological ontology
Honours and Awards
- 2025 Eugene Sheffer Distinguished Lecture, Columbia University
- 2024 Husserl Memorial Lecture, Husserl Archives, KU Leuven
- 2023 Tanner Lectures on Human Values, University of California, Berkeley
- 2023 Dr. Li Yih-yuan Memorial Lecture, Academia Sinica, Taipei, ‘Varieties of animism, in Amazonia and Southeast Asia’
- 2022 Prize of the French Academy for Les Formes du visible and the whole opus
- 2022 Prize of Philosophy of the Principality of Monaco (for the whole opus)
- 2016 Commander in the Order of the Legion of Honour
- 2015 Honorary Doctorate, University of Montreal
- 2014 International Cosmos Prize, Osaka
- 2014 Gold Medal of the French Academy of Agriculture
- 2012 Gold Medal, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
- 2011 Édouard Bonnefous Prize, Académie des Sciences morales et politiques
- 1996 Silver Medal, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
- Election as Foreign Fellow, British Academy
- Election as Foreign Member, American Academy of Arts and Sciences
- Election as Foreign Member, Academy of Sciences of Turin (Class of Moral, Historical and Philological Sciences)
