Céline Bessière

Céline Bessière is a Professor of Sociology at PSL University and a Senior Member of the Institut Universitaire de France. She conducts research within the IRISSO laboratory and leads the JUSTINES team focused on social studies in civil justice. Her international academic engagements include a Visiting Professorship at Striges (2024-2025), a Fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (2016-2017), a Visiting Fellowship at Humboldt University of Berlin (2022), and an upcoming appointment at New York University's Institute of French Studies (January-March 2024).

Her research critically examines how family structures perpetuate economic inequality, with core expertise in inheritance systems, marital separation dynamics, domestic economies, and gendered labor division. Central to her work is the investigation of wealth accumulation in Europe, particularly how formally egalitarian laws mask increasing gender disparities through mechanisms like male appropriation of capital. This focus culminated in her seminal co-authored book The Gender of Capital: How the Family Reproduces Inequalities (La Découverte, 2020), which has been adapted into a comic book (Delcourt/La Découverte, 2023) and translated into English (Harvard University Press, 2023), Chinese, and Korean. Her methodological approach integrates legal sociology, economic analysis, and gender theory within broader frameworks of social stratification.

Her distinguished recognitions include:

• Permanent Senior Membership in the Institut Universitaire de France, France's highest academic honor
• Residential Fellowship at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study
• International Visiting Fellowship at Berlin's Humboldt University

While specific student advising details and grant histories are unreported in the source material, her research infrastructure centers on the IRISSO laboratory and JUSTINES team. Current initiatives involve expanding the global impact of her work through multilingual translations and interdisciplinary collaborations examining family law's role in reproducing class and gender hierarchies, with particular emphasis on European contexts and agricultural business transmissions.