Gisèle Sapiro's research focuses on the intellectual field, the international circulation of works and ideas, particularly with regard to writers and literature.

A research director at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), where she received the bronze medal in 2000, she has been a director of studies at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) since 2011, and a member of the Centre de sociologie européenne (CSE),[2] which became the European Centre for Sociology and Political Science (CESSP), which Sapiro directed from 2010 to 2013.

Currently she is Consulting Editor of the Journal of the History of Ideas.

In several books, she has questioned the notion of the writer's responsibility.

[3] In her essay "Les écrivains et la politique en France" (Writers and Politics in France), published in 2018, Sapiro studies the role of the writer in French society, stating that contemporary literature is a place of social and political criticism.