I am a Research Professor of Sociology,
Directrice de recherche at the CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) in France. Since 2011, I've been a faculty member of the Centre Maurice Halbwachs – a Research Center affiliated to the CNRS, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) and the Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS) in Paris.
Prior to my CNRS position, I was an Assistant Professor/Faculty Fellow at the
Institute of French Studies, NYU (2009-2011), where I returned to teach as a Visiting Professor in 2017. In 2021-22, I spent a sabbatical in New York, as a
Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Advanced Research Collaborative, Graduate Center, City University of New York, and as a Visiting Scholar at the Institute of French Studies, New York University. During this time, I conducted fieldwork for my new research project on corporate sustainability workers and practices.
I teach graduate seminars at
Sciences Po Paris, and I am a board member of the Sociology of gender and sexuality master's program at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (
EHESS).
My research interests lie at the intersection of political sociology, the sociology of gender and race, and the sociology of work/organizations.
I am the author or co-author of several books, including a French handbook in gender studies,
Introduction aux études sur le genre (co-authored with S. Chauvin, A. Jaunait and A. Revillard, 3
rd edition, 2020). My first research book,
La bataille de la parité (
The battle for gender parity), which was published in 2015 (Paris, Economica), explores the campaigns that led to the adoption of the gender parity reform in France, which mandated a 50% gender quota on electoral lists. Based on my reflection on this case, I introduced the concept of
women's cause field [espace de la cause des femmes], which offers new theoretical insights on the architecture of collective protest in an era of social movement institutionalization.
Over the past few years, I conducted an
in-depth study of Diversity & Inclusion offices in a variety of large multinational companies, based in the United States and France. This comparative research looks at how national contexts shape diversity work and the efforts of diversity managers to gain legitimacy within organizations.The book stemming from this research, titled
Le management de la vertu. La diversité en entreprise, à New York et Paris, was released by Les Presses de Sciences Po in January, 2023. An English translation of the book ("
The Management of Virtue. Corporate Diversity in New York and In Paris") will appear with Oxford University Press in 2025.
I am currently leading a collective research project (
ProVirCap) funded by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche and involving a team of 13 scholars (2021-2025). Based on the combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, the ProVirCap project offers a
innovative take on “responsible capitalism” by placing the lens on its managers, their work activities, and their professional environments in the United States, France, and Spain.
Recent publications:
"Les stigmates de la vertu. Légitimer la diversité en entreprise, à New York et à Paris",
Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, 241, 2022.
"The women's cause in a field: rethinking the architecture of collective protest in the era of movement institutionalization",
Social Movement Studies, 20(2), 2021.
"Servir l'entreprise ou la changer? Les responsables diversité entre gestion, critique et performance de la vertu",
Revue française de sociologie, 60(2), 2019 [avec Dorothée Prud'homme].
