Lucas Chancel pursues his undergraduate studies in social sciences at Sciences Po as well at Pierre et Marie Curie University in Paris, where he obtains a Bachelor in Physics applied to earth sciences. He earns an M.Sc in Economics and public policy from the Ecole Polytechnique, ENSAE and Sciences Po and pursues his scientific training at Imperial College London where he obtains an M.Sc in engineering specialized in renewable energy. He earns his PhD in economics from the School for Advances Studies in the Social Sciences and Paris Sciences Lettres University in 2018. He writes his dissertation entitled "Essays on global income and pollution inequality" under the supervision of Thomas Piketty and obtains the special mention of the Jury at the Best PhD Thesis prize of Paris Sciences Lettres University. He also studied at the London School of Economics and at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. In 2011, he joins the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations and starts to teach at Sciences Po where he currently teaches a Master-level course entitled Global inequality and sustainability. He joins the World Inequality Lab at the Paris School of Economics in 2015. He gives conferences on global inequality and sustainability including at the United Nations Headquarters in New York. He collaborates with modern artists, including , on arts and social science projects related to inequality or the economy. Lucas Chancel is an op-ed contributor to French newspapers Le Monde and Libération and intervenes in the international media to discuss economic developments and present his research findings. On the occasion of the Paris Climate Conference, he defends a global progressive tax on carbon emissions. In 2017, he publishes is first book in French "Insoutenables inégalités: pour une justice sociale et environnementale", a "reflexion on the complex articulation of the socio-economic sphere and environmental sphere" according to French journal Le Monde. The book is translated in English by Harvard University Press in 2020 under the title "Unsustainable Inequality: Social justice and the environment". In 2018, he serves as general coordinator of the World Inequality Report, published in a dozen languages and widely discussed in the global media. In 2019, he co-drafts, along with Thomas Piketty and other intellectuals, the Treaty for the Democratization of Europe. He is lead researcher of a chapter of Human Development Report 2019 on global inequality and poverty. In 2020, il argues in favor of debt mutualization between France, Italy and Spain in the context of the Coronavirus crisis.
