Bernard HUBERT, Senior scientist at the National Institute for Agricultural Research (Institut National de Recherche Agronomique, INRA) and Professor at the Advanced School for the Social Sciences (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, EHESS), trained as an ecologist (his thesis study concerned functional ecology in Western Africa), but his work has broadened as he has questioned the role of human activities in this setting, seeking to understand the contribution of the social sciences to issues in the life sciences.
In more recent years, sustainable development has provided the intellectual framework for the development of cross-disciplinary work around the notion of integration (of disciplines, social actors, public and private sector actions), by deliberately focusing on the design and conduct of research projects in society.
He has been elected as Chair of Agropolis International in Montpellier, where he is acting since April 1st 2009, and is chairing since 2010 the French CRAI (Commission de la Recherche Agronomique Internationale), which groups together Cemagref, Cirad, Inra and
IRD with the three Ministries in charge of Foreign Affairs, Research, and Agriculture.