Virginie Rachmuhl is a part-time associate professor (PAST) at the Paris School of Urban Planning in the Master 2 International Expertise – Cities of the South program.
She is a sociologist and urban planner and has been working for 25 years on issues related to social housing, the integration of precarious neighborhoods, and participatory processes that enable residents and organized groups to influence and take action in urban operations that affect them. She began her career as a consultant at ACT Consultants, a research firm specializing in urban policy in France and the integration of disadvantaged neighborhoods internationally, where she worked for seven years. She also spent two years coordinating an independent network of experts focused on modernizing the social and solidarity economy.
Since 2001, Virginie Rachmuhl has been working as urban program manager at GRET (Professionals in Solidarity Development), a major French international solidarity NGO (www.gret.org
). There, she conducts socio-urban studies, leads technical assistance/project management assistance missions, supervises operational projects, coordinates or contributes to capitalization and publications, and participates in public debate on more inclusive and sustainable urban planning and urban cooperation policies. She has gained experience in various geographical contexts, in Africa (Morocco, Mauritania, Congo Brazzaville, Senegal, and Burkina Faso), Latin America and the Caribbean (Haiti, Cuba, Brazil), French overseas
territories (French Guiana), and more occasionally in Myanmar, Cambodia, Madagascar, Mexico, Panama, and South Africa.
Interested in training and knowledge transfer, she regularly taught master's courses before becoming a PAST at the EUP in 2018. Her main objective there, particularly through the workshop she supervises, is to equip future urban professionals to recognize and integrate precarious neighborhoods and their inhabitants into the development and management of cities in the Global South.