Current projects
(De)radicalization and the multicultural city: Security, urban policy, and everyday life in Brussels and Marseille. A comparative anthropological study (2021-2024)
With Nadia Fadil et Maarten Loopmans.
HERICOL Colonial Legacies in Belgium: universities, mobilizations and counter-mobilizations (2020-2025)
With Amandine Lauro and Sasha Newell
[go to the website] Since the 1990s, new forms of discourse and mobilization have emerged to question Belgium’s colonial past and postcolonial present. Various social actors – journalists, academics, archivists, community activists, artists, members of the African diaspora, former colonists and their descendants, local and national political actors, etc. – have contributed to putting the issue of colonial heritage on the public agenda. To better understand the resurgence of this past, the HERICOL project focuses on three dimensions: the role played in colonial history by Belgian universities, in particular the ULB, and the question of the “decolonization of university”; public controversies on the colonial history structured by mobilizations and counter-mobilizations; the social trajectories of former colonials from 1960 to the present day and their role in post-colonial controversies.
ACADISCRI Inequalities of treatment, study and working conditions in higher education and research (2019-2022)
With Marguerite Cognet, Christelle Hamel, Fabrice Dhume, Cécile Rodrigues, Géraldine Bozec, Romane Blassel and Pierre-Olivier Weiss.
[go to the website] ACADISCRI is a scientific research project that focuses on the statistical measurement and qualitative analysis of the experience of unequal treatment and discrimination in the academia. It concerns both students and staff of higher education and research institutions. It is the first nationwide survey in France covering the main grounds of discrimination (gender, class, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, health and disability, political opinion and union membership). For the first time, it will provide a statistical representation of the discrimination experienced in working and training conditions in higher education and research institutions in France.
Past projects
DPDA Words and deeds: the criminal justice system facing racist offenses (2016-2018)
With Narguesse Keyhani, Cécile Rodrigues, Audrey Célestine, Sébastien Delarre et Soline Laplanche-Servigne.
[go to the website] Public authorities, anti-racist associations and community organizations are alarmed by the multiplication of racist discourse in the public space. The available statistical data shows an unprecedented increase in racist “actions” and “threats”. This evolution concerns all forms of racism identified by the public statistical apparatus: anti-Semitism, anti-Maghreb racism and/or Islamophobia and racism against “other” groups. However, this general evolution deserves to be analysed in depth. The aim of this research project is to renew the socio-historical analysis of the racist phenomenon by focusing on the process of criminalization of racist discourse and acts, and by proposing a global analytical framework for all forms of racism. Using unpublished quantitative data (criminal records) and qualitative data (interviews, observations), the survey aims to study four dimensions: the repression of racist speech; the measurement of racist acts; the sociology of perpetrators; and the sociology of victims.