Presentation of the university

Presentation universite

Aix-Marseille Université (AMU) is the largest multidisciplinary university in the French-speaking world, with 80,000 students and nearly 8,000 staff on 5 major campuses meeting international standards. Owner of 90% of its property, the university is present in 9 cities, in 4 departments of the South of France.
Its A*Midex University Foundation, which supports the ongoing IDEX, is helping to develop a world-class interdisciplinary higher education and research cluster. Known as a "research-intensive university", it is home to 122 research structures linked to major national research organizations.

Aix-Marseille Université is committed to interdisciplinarity, which is at the heart of its development strategy, and has recently created 18 "instituts d'établissement" (institutes of higher education), guaranteeing bridges between research and education, and a broad international outlook. Local partnerships such as the Cité de l'Innovation et des Savoirs Aix-Marseille (CISAM), the Pôles d'Innovation Territoriaux (PIT) and the technology platforms in partnership with the CNRS and INSERM bear witness to AMU's commitment to innovation and its contribution to the creation of societal wealth.
High-quality training courses, backed up by major research teams, accompanied by measures to encourage student entrepreneurship, and the possibility for economic players to access these resources, are all levers for regional development and influence.
As a responsible university, Aix-Marseille Université makes "living well together" a priority. Its commitment to sustainable development in all its dimensions - human, environmental and patrimonial - is embodied in a number of actions and measures: a travel plan, a waste management plan, raising students' awareness of the climate emergency and introducing a sustainable development bonus, the creation of the AMU Climate Council, as well as measures to combat sexual, sexist and homophobic harassment, the application of a master plan for the disabled, measures to combat racism and anti-Semitism, and numerous sports and festive events on campus. Widely open to the world, with 10,000 international students and more than 40 internationally-partnered degrees, AMU recently won the European Commission's call for projects to build "CIVIS, a European Civic University" with its 9 European partners, contributing to major societal challenges with a particular focus on Africa and the Mediterranean.

1. Presentation

Created on January 1, 2012, Aix-Marseille Université (AMU) can legitimately consider, at the end of an initial period 2012-2017 largely devoted to structuring the single university, that it has met the major challenge it set itself: to successfully merge the three universities in the region and give birth to a major university of world renown.

AMU is now a research-intensive university that has forged partnerships all over the world, asserted its roots and territorial integration, and ranks among France's top universities in the Shanghai rankings. AMU is a multi-disciplinary university structured around five disciplinary sectors spread over 17 components (faculties, schools, institutes) and one multi-disciplinary sector (including ESPE and IUT):

  • Arts, Letters, Languages and Humanities
  • Law and Political Science
  • Economics and Management
  • Health
  • Science and Technology

It is present in four departments and 9 cities. Its real estate assets are spread over 54 sites representing more than 830,000 m². AMU is a winner of the "Opération Campus" program, which, in conjunction with the CPER (Contrat de Plan Etat-Région), is enabling it to upgrade and modernize its campuses to meet the highest international standards. AMU is now a recognized and identified player in its own right, and has established itself as a key player in its region, actively contributing to its development and influence.

Since 2012, AMU has been developing and structuring a streamlined, clear training offer. This work was further developed as part of the master plan for the training offer it drew up in 2016 and 2017, the fruit of internal consultation as well as exchanges with socio-economic partners and local authorities. In terms of research and innovation, AMU has developed a strategy co-constructed on a site-wide scale in conjunction with the main research organizations (CNRS, Inserm, IRD, CEA...) and structured around its numerous research units and federations and its five intersectoral and interdisciplinary research clusters (PR2I):

  • Energy
  • Environment
  • Humanities
  • Health & Life Sciences
  • Advanced Science & Technology

The excellence of the site's research has been recognized by its success in several national calls for projects (labex, equipex, Instituts convergences, RHU, EUR...) and European calls for projects such as H2020 (AMU is the third French institution to collect funds under this program). The accreditation of the A*Midex project, led by Aix-Marseille Université and its partners (AMU, CNRS, Inserm, IRD, CEA, Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Marseille, Institut d'Etudes Politiques d'Aix-en-Provence and Ecole Central de Marseille), has also had a tremendous structuring and stimulating effect on the establishment. It has created a real dynamic around the five priority themes and strategic objectives identified back in 2012:

  • Excellence in education and research
  • Partnerships with the socio-economic world
  • Internationalization of the site's areas of excellence
  • Ambitious human resources policy
  • Attractiveness of the site


A*Midex acts as a gas pedal, through calls for projects or proactive actions, so that Aix-Marseille Université and its partners can rapidly realize their ambitions. The continued existence of A*Midex in 2016 reflects both recognition of the work accomplished by AMU and the opportunity to benefit from a formidable tool to support the university's strategy.

At the end of a period that saw the energies of our entire university community mobilized to build a new institution, it is on the strength of this collective dynamic that AMU is now looking to its future with a project that is both ambitious and unifying for the period 2018-2022. While the first five-year contract (2012-2017) was naturally aimed at establishing and structuring the merged university, the next contract will focus on its future. The 2018-2022 contract will focus on innovation in all the university's areas of activity, strengthening the link between education and research, and the quality approach as the guiding principles for our continued pursuit of excellence, particularly with the support of A*Midex.

2. Key figures

  • nearly 80,000 students, including 10,000 international students, and 1,100 degrees
  • 12 doctoral schools
  • 120 student associations
  • 8,000 employees
  • 17 faculties and schools
  • 18 interdisciplinary institutes
  • 5 large campuses
  • 1 CIVIS European civic university in cooperation with 9 universities
  • 1 perpetuated IDEX
  • 1 Aix-Marseille City of Innovation and Knowledge (CISAM)
  • 122 research structures, including 113 research units and 9 federative structures