Céline Pessis
Membership: 2022
Member Bio
Céline Pessis's research proposes a reassessment of the modernization of post-World War II French society that places environmental knowledge, reflexivity, and conflict at the center of the narrative. Her first book dealt with the emergence of political ecology as it related to the challenge of "big science" in France in 1968. Celine's post-doctoral work (IFRIS, Paris, 2019–2021) calls for resituating the genesis of French organic farming in complex though marginalized soil-life maintenance practices, as well as in post-war agricultural debates around motorization. Her current project explores the connections of these alternative agricultural worlds with the networks of natural food and medicine and their transnational circulations. Celine coordinates the research project "Politics of the Agricultural Machine: Lock-Ins, Incentives and Socio-Ecological Consequences of Agricultural Mechanization in France (1945–2021)." She teaches environmental history and sociology at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Master's in Ecological Transition), the University Paris Dauphine, and the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS).
