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This article offers a socio-historical analysis of the institutionalization of multidisciplinary studies by examining the demand for and availability of these types of programs in higher education and research institutions, during the years between 1950 and 1970. Through a preliminary analysis of the debates related to the policies on science and teaching of higher education and the actors who played an active role in them (politicians and administrative officials, employers, scholars, students), emerges a set of driving forces that result from the intersection of scholarly, economic and militant interests and push towards the introduction of multidisciplinary studies. Multidisciplinarity was presented from an epistemological and/or “critical” point of view, as one of the conditions for improving student learning and aiding in the renewal of knowledge, and was one of the principal demands during student led protests from May to July 1968. With the introduction of the Faure Law of 1968, multidisciplinary studies constituted one of the three pillars of the refounding of the university system in the period after 1968. In experimenting with a range of uses of multidisciplinary studies, from science to activism, the University of Paris VIII-Vincennes, contributed to the creation and evolution of certain multidisciplinary studies, especially that of women’s studies.