A hundred and twenty researchers and faculty members make up five teams, alongside 150 PhD students, focusing on major subjects . Collectively they form a research centre specializing in the social sciences, very much in the plural. The challenge shared by all members of Pacte is to build common languages and horizontal knowledge of society, and its political, territorial, sociological and ecological dimensions, drawing on scientific encounters. The centre’s key asset is its day-to-day interdisciplinary practice, comparing methods and confronting epistemologies, while working on common ground. Exchanges between teams concern relations between actors, from large international bodies to more local entities , but also territorial deployment, urban and rural, with allowance for the environmental interactions such processes entail.