September 2026 to June 2027
Alix Levain's residency takes place within the framework of the Chair Inhabiting the Earth Through the Lens of Planetary Boundaries.
Alix Levain is a Research Fellow in Anthropology at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). Her research focuses on lived experiences of contemporary ecological upheavals, the politics of knowledge, and the affects associated with ecosystem degradation. Grounded in a public anthropology perspective, her work examines transformations in coastal environments through a historical and comparative analysis of the emergence of issues surrounding algal proliferation and water pollution.
Her doctoral thesis, defended in 2014, explored the lived experience of green tides in Brittany. Since 2019, Alix Levain has been involved in a major collaborative research project on the Yellow Vests movement and the cahiers citoyens (citizens' registers), coordinated by M. Della Sudda, with a particular focus on the relationship to ecology among those involved in the movement.
Her work has been published in Techniques & Culture, Environment & Society, Nature Sciences Sociétés, Environmental Sociology, Land Use Policy and Science of the Total Environment. She has also recently co-edited Elusive Partners: Contemporary Anthropological Perspectives on Marine Species (Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle Editions, 2023) and Des vies avec des plages : expériences, relations, devenirs (Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2024).
Living Conditions and the Conditions of Life: Popular Understandings and Appropriations of Planetary Boundaries in a Growing Metropolis
The project draws on a collaborative study of the cahiers de doléances (registers of grievances) of Nantes Métropole and their surrounding context to explore the connections between material living conditions, ecological sensitivities and civic engagement in the transformation of the city.
Collected in 2018 and 2019, these registers constitute a unique source for understanding ongoing socio-ecological transformations, as they bring together democratic concerns and the voices of citizens who contributed to these opportunities for public expression, making full use of the freedom afforded by this format.
In this context, the project aims to:
- Understand from the ground up how living conditions and ecological cultures intersect, shedding light on socially situated processes of ecological transition rooted in lived experiences of inhabiting a place.
- Explore, from a public anthropology perspective, the affects and forms of sensitivity associated with the experience of planetary boundaries, focusing on attachments and the related processes of political subjectivation.
- Experiment with spaces for co-interpretation based on residents' voices and written accounts, while conveying their full depth and complexity.
Levain A., Bernard de Raymond A., Buton F., Reungoat E. 2025. « ‘Toujours là’ ? ». In : Reungoat E., Bordiec S., Buton F., Dondeyne C, Walker E. (dir.), Devenir des Gilets jaunes. Vulaines-sur-Seine : Le Croquant. p.191-216.
Pachoud-Janody E., Noguera S., Della Sudda M., Levain A., Walker E. 2025. Les cahiers de doléances de l’Orne et du Finistère (2018-2019). Matérialité des cahiers, conditions d’énonciation et de participation. Note de recherche ANR Gilets jaunes. ⟨hal-04902218⟩
Levain A. 2024. « Découvrir sans en avoir l’air : Émergence, partage et transformation des pratiques de recherche face aux crises environnementales ». In : Lemoine M., Watteaux M. (dir.), Le métier de chercheur.e III : Découvrir, innover, inventer en sciences humaines et sociales. Rennes : PU Rennes / MSH Bretagne, p.116-126.
Levain A. 2024. « Les Gilets jaunes, des climatosceptiques et des pollueurs ? » In : Reungoat E. et Buton F. (dir.), Idées reçues sur les Gilets jaunes. Paris : Le Cavalier Bleu. p.105-112.
Levain A. 2023. Tes problèmes seront les miens. Patience et longueur de temps dans l’engagement interdisciplinaire en études environnementales. Tracés. Revue de Sciences humaines, vol. 22, p. 75-95.
Levain A., Persico S., Alexandre C., Dondeyne C., Elalaoui C., Fortun L., Gaborit N., Le Lann Y., Reungoat E., Della Sudda M. 2022. Are movements opposed to climate-change policy necessarily anti-environmental? A review of social science research on the Yellow Vests’ environmental attitudes. French Politics, vol. 20, n° 3-4, p. 550-572.
