Home>The Nancy Campus is 20 Years Old!

25.05.2020

The Nancy Campus is 20 Years Old!

In October 2000, 42 first-year and second-year students arrived on Sciences Po’s first international campus outside of Paris, in Nancy. Inaugurated by Richard Descoings, then President of Sciences Po, the Nancy campus hosts the Undergraduate College’s European programme with a focus on Franco-German relations. In twenty years, over 2,000 students have studied at the Nancy campus.

Close to Germany and Luxembourg, and an hour and a half by high-speed train from Paris, Nancy is a student town (approximately 50,000 students live and study in the city) with a strong European identity and international dimension. Visitors to Nancy discover a rich historical legacy, featuring the renowned architectural ensemble around the Place Stanislas—a Unesco World Heritage site—and the École de Nancy, the spearhead of Art Nouveau in France. The campus itself is located in a prestigious eighteenth-century building, the Hôtel des Missions Royales.

A EUROPEAN SPECIALISATION WITH A FOCUS ON FRANCO-GERMAN RELATIONS

The Nancy campus hosts 300 students on its campus, for the first two years of their undergraduate degree. Students follow Sciences Po’s multidisciplinary programme in the social sciences with a geographical focus on the political, economic and social aspects of the European Union from a comparative perspective between France and Germany—the engines of European integration and community building. 

The programme is taught mainly in French with some courses in English and German. It covers major European issues such as the creation of a European political area and an integrated economic market while deepening students’ knowledge of the French and German-speaking area, particularly through the seminar run through the Alfred Grosser Chair. Students can study the languages of the region such as German, English and Italian, but also Spanish, Russian, or Swedish. Students on this campus can also choose to pursue a dual degree with University College London (UCL) or Freie Universität Berlin.

Since 2005, students of the Nancy campus take an annual study trip to a European city to visit and meet professionals of European and governmental institutions. In 2019, second-year students went to Brussels to visit the European Parliament, the European Commission, amongst others, and first-year students had the choice between Berlin or Vienna.

Campus life in Nancy also includes annual simulations of the Franco-German Council of Ministers where students take the roles of the German Chancellor and the French President. Sciences Po’s campus in Nancy is also an integral part of CIVICA, the European University of the Social Sciences.

Find out more