Yves Winkin was Director of Scientific and Technical Culture at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers [National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts] in Paris, and of the Musée des Arts et Métiers [Museum of Arts and Crafts], part of CNAM, from 2015 to 2019.
He is a member of the Kuratorium of the Deutsches Museum and a curatorial advisor to several museums in Europe. He is commissioning editor for the French publishing house Editions des Archives Contemporaines. In 2013, he served as liaison between the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon (ENSL) and the new Musée des Confluences of Lyon, in charge of interdisciplinary projects. Across 2011 and 2012, he was Director of the Institut Français de l’Éducation [French Institute of Education], a national agency embedded in the ENSL. From 2006 to 2010, he was Deputy Director for Research and International Relations of ENSL; previously he was Professor of Anthropology and Communication at ENSL.
Winkin established the contours in France of an anthropological approach to face-to-face communication; the discipline he helped to define is the anthropology of communication. He offered an appropriate theoretical framework; he made explicit the ethnographic methodology, and suggested areas of investigation. His own research focuses on interactions in urban settings, especially interactions between pedestrians and other urban dwellers.
While mostly based in either France or Belgium, he has substantial international experience, including being a “Fulbright Scholar in Residence” at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, in the fall of 1983; the University of Quebec in Montreal, in January 1984; invited to serve as associate director of studies by Pierre Bourdieu at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in April 1984, October 1986, May 1992 and October 1998; a stint as Visiting Associate Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, in the spring of 1987; with additional stops at: Massey University in New Zealand in the summer of 1989; the University of Geneva, from 1992 to 2006 (as a substitute professor); the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro in Brazil in April-May 1995; a return to the University of Pennsylvania, where he had earned his MA, 1997-98; a return to Brazil in August-September 1998, this time at the Universidade Estadual de Campinas in Brazil; and El Colegio de Michoacán in Samora, Mexico, in March 2006. Through international agreements between universities, he has presented courses at Université de la Réunion on Reunion Island, the University of Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso, and East China Normal University in Shanghai. During fall 2012, he was Harron Family Endowed Chair in Communication at Villanova University, in Philadelphia, PA; and in spring 2013, he served as Visiting Professor of Communication at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Authored Books
D’Erving à Goffman: Une oeuvre performée? Paris, France: Editions MkF, 2023.
Réinventer les musées ? Paris, France: Editions MkF, 2020.
Erving Goffman. A Critical Introduction to Media and Communication Theory (with W. Leeds-Hurwitz). New York: Peter Lang, 2013.
Vers une marche plaisir en ville: boîte à outils pour augmenter le bonheur de marcher (with S. Lavadinho). Lyon, France: Editions du CERTU (Centre d’Etudes sur les Réseaux, les Transports et l’Urbanisme), 2012.
Comment l’informatique vient aux enfants. Pour une approche anthropologique des usages de l’ordinateur à l‘école (with E. Barchechath & R. Magli). Paris, France: Editions des Archives Contemporaines, 2006 .
La communication n’est pas une marchandise. Résister à l’agenda de Bologne. Bruxelles, Belgium: Editions Labor/Editions Espace de Libertés, 2003.
Marché éditorial et démarches d’écrivains. Un état des lieux et des forces de l’édition littéraire en Communauté française de Belgique (with P. Durand). Bruxelles, Belgium: Éditions du Ministère de la Culture, 1996.
Anthropologie de la communication: de la théorie au terrain. Bruxelles, Belgium: Éditions De Boeck Université, 1996.
Erving Goffman: les moments et leurs hommes. Paris, France: Éditions du Seuil et Éditions de Minuit, 1988.
La Nouvelle Communication. Paris, France: Éditions du Seuil, 1981.
Edited Collections
Le Symbolique et le Social. La réception internationale de Pierre Bourdieu. Actes du colloque de Cerisy (with J. Dubois and P. Durand). Liège, Belgium: Editions de l’Université de Liège, 2005.
Rhétoriques du Corps (with P. Dubois). Bruxelles, Belgium: De Boeck, 1988.
Gregory Bateson: premier état d’un héritage. Paris, France: Éditions du Seuil, 1988.
Pragmatique et discours: actes du colloque “Langage et Ex-Communication” (with P. Dubois). Louvain, Belgium: Cabay, 1982.
Work for CID:
Yves Winkin was a member of the Organizing Committee for the National Communication Association‘s Summer Conference on Intercultural Dialogue in Istanbul, Turkey, which led to the creation of CID. He translated KC35: Media Ecology into French; he serves as a reviewer for French translations; and he wrote a meditation on World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development 2023.
Center for Intercultural Dialogue 
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