Nuit des Idées – Launch of the fourth edition (31 January 2019)

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On January 31, the fourth edition of the Nuit des Idées (“Night of Ideas”) will bring together several tens of thousands of people at more than 150 events held in France and in 70 other countries.

This year’s theme, “Facing our Time,” will tackle the major challenges of our age through in-depth dialogues on current political, economic and societal challenges.

Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs Jean-Yves le Drian will preside over the Nuit des Idées in Bucharest. The Institut Français of Romania and its partners will host a series of events nationwide on the manipulation of information; they will include debates by experts, workshops, and for the youngest guests, games involving awareness-raising and detection.

At the Quai d’Orsay, European Affairs Minister Nathalie Loiseau will host Philippe Descola, an anthropologist and professor at the Collège de France, and Theaster Gates, an American artist and urban planner and a professor at the University of Chicago, who will explore new relationships between humans and non-humans, between man and his environment, and between nature and cities, themes that are central to current considerations of the future of our world.

With the support of the Institut Français, an agency of the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs, and the Ministry of Culture, the Nuit des Idées offers an annual opportunity to formulate innovative proposals on cultural exchanges and exchanges of knowledge, and to showcase intellectual and cultural scenes from all over the world in a festive atmosphere. The Nuit des Idées underscores the commitment by the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs to the circulation of ideas and the public debate, and illustrates its policy on French-speaking cultures and the French language, which it promotes as a language of debate and questioning of the contemporary world.