 There, he created Cresp, the Center for Research on Social and Health Issues, working on public health problems such as the history of child lead poisoning in France and the politics of Aids in Sub-Saharan Africa.Elected in 1999 as director of studies in social anthropology at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Fassin founded and directed from 2007 to 2010 Iris, the Interdisciplinary Research Institute for Social Sciences, in an effort to bring together anthropologists, sociologists, historians, political scientists and legal scholars around contemporary political and social issues.He himself developed a long-term program exploring the multiple facets of humanitarianism in local and international policies, especially towards the poor, the immigrant and refugees, as well as victims of violence and epidemics.