I am a sociologist and philosopher by training, and a certified narrative practitioner since 2024. For nearly thirty years I have worked on how knowledge, professional practices, life experiences and institutions are made, particularly in health and agriculture.

My path has unfolded in three stages: first in research centres and universities, then in study and advisory missions for public and private clients. Now, and more recently, I also take a more propositional, accompanying stance, in which I put forward orientations, and the corresponding projects, training and writing, on regenerative agriculture, nutrient density and metabolic health, and on work in agriculture.

Two breaks structure this path, a fairly clear one in 2015 and a partial one under way since 2024. A continuous thread nevertheless runs through them: attention to the singular case, a refusal of reductionism and ideology, rigour and professional ethics, and epistemology practised as an applied discipline rather than as a rhetoric of authority.

1. 1998–2014 · Academic research

My academic path spanned fifteen years, between sociology and philosophy. After several years marked by a strong interest in Bourdieu’s sociology, my DEA (research master’s) in sociology at EHESS under Rémi Lenoir, together with Luc Boltanski’s seminar, opened me to the pragmatic analysis of practices and interactions. My PhD at the Centre de Sociologie de l’Innovation (CSI) of Mines Paris, where I benefited from Bruno Latour’s teaching, was defended in 2004 under the supervision of Antoine Hennion and Isaac Joseph. It studied work at the RATP, the Paris transport authority, in relation to technology and users. Analysing work as collecting, I described how existence is made through relational activation and process, while pointing to the limits of this “actor-network” approach in light of the philosophies of actualisation and individuation (Deleuze).

During my doctorate I also carried out several applied research projects for the RATP, on certification in services and on the transfer of technological innovation into organisations and work practices.

My postdoctoral work at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, in Hans-Jörg Rheinberger’s department, focused on the history of neonatal intensive care, together with medical-anthropology fieldwork in a neonatal intensive care unit. It broadened my perspective towards historical epistemology and turned my attention to living beings and the medical sciences, while drawing on my strong interest in the thought of Peter Sloterdijk.

I returned to France through a second postdoc in the interdisciplinary social-science and agronomy unit of INRA (now INRAE), SAD department, with Marc Barbier, Marianne Cerf and Pascal Béguin. There I worked on modelling participatory research for sustainable agriculture, analysing many design projects involving farmers and researchers.

I then completed a second master’s degree, in philosophy, at Paris-X Nanterre, under Thierry Hoquet and Élie During, on Raymond Ruyer, an author on whom I have specialised, from an ontological and metaphysical rather than phenomenological angle, and whom few researchers were working on at the time. This philosophical work was strengthened by regular participation in the Groupe d’Études Constructivistes at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (Isabelle Stengers, Didier Debaise). It was extended by a year exploring non-dualist thought (notably through Georges Vallin), close to Whitehead, together with a practical discovery of Mahayana Buddhism.

During the same period I was a junior lecturer (ATER) at Université Paris-VII alongside Céline Lefève, teaching the history and philosophy of biomedicine, which strengthened my grounding in the epistemology of the life sciences (Canguilhem in particular).

This sequence ended with a research contract at EHESS-IRESP with Isabelle Ville, on the history and sociology of “inclusive school” policies and practices.

Degrees, positions, publications and teaching are listed on the Credentials page.

First break · 2015

In 2015 I left academia. I founded my own practice, Vertical Horizontal, and began working as an independent study officer and consultant-researcher.

This was not a move against academia. It came from the conviction that the intellectual tools I had built there find their full relevance when they serve concrete transformations, provided one no longer speaks from above but from the situations and stakes of institutional and field actors.

2. 2015–2024 · Consultant

For a decade I worked as a consultant for public and private clients, most often through public tenders. I respond to briefs, conduct studies and evaluations, and deliver reports and sometimes recommendations. The work has focused on four fields: agriculture and the environment, the marine environment, energy and its uses, and health. The main engagements are listed on the Credentials page.

Frameworks used — The sociology of concrete situations, organisations and innovation; public policy analysis; mapping of incommensurabilities between actors; applied epistemology; narrative practice; and the philosophy of Ruyer or Tarde, mobilised even in technical deliverables written for agronomic engineers.

Second shift · 2024–25

In the mid-2020s a new shift began, partial, still under way and more complex than the first. It does not mark a radical exit from one stance and framework into something else entirely, but the addition of a dimension that overlays the consultant’s stance and may eventually move it more deeply. Besides answering tenders and briefs, I put forward a few orientations that matter to me, so as to develop my own projects, training and writing. This shift is linked to the training I completed in 2024 to become a certified narrative practitioner, which drew me towards accompaniment rather than pure expertise. It is also linked to my analysis of how issues have been handled in the 2020s, in agriculture, health and food in particular, which I find problematic.

Stage 3 — 2024–25… · Accompanying consultant and proposals

I am now gradually building the stance of an accompanying consultant, intervening in transformation processes in which my study work (reports, studies, training) and the accompaniment of organisations and people cannot be separated. Alongside this primary stance, without being reduced to it, I act as a social-science expert and tiers veilleur, a critical third party who keeps watch, drawing on my skills in studies, the social sciences and epistemology: critical distance, epistemological knowledge, and vigilance about biases and actor strategies, particularly in analysing scientific and politico-media controversies. This dimension nourishes the stance from within; it does not define the overall identity of the work.

The regenerative agriculture / nutrient density / metabolic health triptych is, at this stage, a privileged object of this new orientation. It is a three-sided construction that connects orientations for agriculture, an evolutionary nutritional framework centred on nourishment, and the approach of metabolic medicine as rooted notably in low-carb eating.

Within this project, in 2025 I carried out a support mission studying current controversies around the transformation of food systems (epistemology in nutrition and environmental sciences, public policy, sociology of actor systems and influence), from a perspective critical of the EAT-Lancet report and of the “plant-based” shift in diets. In 2026 I began a study of adaptive multi-paddock grazing practices in beef cattle farming.

The other axis, linked to the first, consists in stressing how central it is to take account of the transformations of farm work (health included, but also situated knowledge, technology, organisation, a global approach to the business, value systems and professional identity, employment and training), if one wishes to contribute reasonably, peacefully and effectively to the “transition” challenges of this sector. The same applies to fisheries. The grazing study contributes to this.