About me

I am a teacher and researcher in ecological economics at AgroParisTech and at the University of Montpellier. Trained as an agro-economist, I study how human societies organize themselves to carry out biodiversity conservation actions and to implement their environmental policies. 

The general problematic that runs through my research work consists in studying the conditions of compatibility, and incompatibility, between agricultural activities, land-use planning and the achievement of biodiversity conservation objectives in a context of global changes. Societies are facing more and more pressures and constraints of different natures: climate change, demographic pressure, biodiversity erosion, and conflicts of use. These constraints contribute to the complexity of the management and the organization of territories in space and time, and force actors to organize themselves to face them. It is the study of these responses of societies, carried by organizations, institutions and citizens, that motivates my research activity. My research strives to combine academic production and transfer to the training of students and action with decision-makers. 

My research activities concern mainly the analysis of public, citizens and private forms of action for biodiversity conservation around three main objectives: (1) to evaluate the conditions of effectiveness and emergence of these actions, (2) to study alternative modes of environmental action, and (3) to develop methods and tools to improve biodiversity conservation strategies. In response to these objectives, I ask questions about the governance of biodiversity, the roles of institutions, environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and citizens, the behaviors and strategies of actors, and the acceptability and preferences of citizens for other forms of development that are more respectful of environmental stakes. I studied both public actors (Occitanie region, metropolises), private actors (farmers, environmental consulting firms, offset banks), and citizens' groups. 

In order to answer these issues, I place my work in the sciences of sustainability, more precisely in the field of ecological economics (EE). The founding principles of EE support my research practice, in particular: the use of methodological pluralism, the recognition of a plurality of values (including intrinsic ones) attributed to nature, the support of decision-making, and the ambition to conduct inter- or even transdisciplinary research. This translates concretely in my research by: 1) an interdisciplinary approach to couple different frameworks of analysis in social sciences with ecological sciences, 2) the mobilization of a plurality of methods and tools to conduct both spatial, quantitative and qualitative analyses, and 3) the conduct of participatory approaches with territorial actors in the perspective of an action-oriented research. 

My training as well as my academic experience in various multidisciplinary research laboratories in France and Germany lead me to consider this problematic in an integrated way by combining solid approaches in economics with contributions from other disciplines, notably ecology and geography. To conduct this interdisciplinary research, I have trained in these disciplines through complementary trainings in order to use their concepts, tools and main developments, and I have developed an important network of interdisciplinary collaborations. This openness seems to me now essential to understand the processes at stake in territorial dynamics, and to be able to propose solutions for the development of long-term sustainable socioecosystems subject to multiple constraints, whether biophysical, socio-economic or political factors. 

I practice an applied research with the will to combine academic excellence and support to public decision-makers and local stakeholders. Thus, I conduct a research aiming at moving from the production of fundamental knowledge to operational contributions in the design, monitoring and evaluation of public policies in order to accompany the necessary territorial transitions at different scales. This has led me to establish close links with various actors at different territorial scales and in different countries.