Valérie November

Bio

Specialising in the analysis of urban, environmental and natural risks, particularly their effects on the landscape, Valérie November is a Research Director at the CNRS and has been affiliated with the Techniques, Territories and Society Laboratory (LATTS UMR 8134 CNRS, École des Ponts, Université Paris-Est) since 2011. Between 2006 and 2011, she was a Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) research fellow based at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), where she led the RiskPrint project, which aimed to understand the complex spatiality of risks.

Since 2015, her work has focused on the continuum of risks and crises, primarily in urban settings. Between 2015 and 2018, she led the Euridice research programme, centred on crisis management mechanisms in partnership with the General Secretariat for Defence and Security of the Paris Police Prefecture. From September 2018 to the end of 2022, she led the UrbaRiskLab project, funded by I-Site FUTURE. She has participated in several research projects on crisis management: the MACIV, APRIL and CrisOrg projects, all funded by the ANR.

Since 2023, she has been focusing on infrastructure and very long-term storage practices, particularly in six areas (museum collections, seed banks, data archives, environmental specimen banks, CO₂ storage sites and radioactive waste storage sites).

She is the author of “Les territoires du risque: le risque comme objet de réflexion géographique” (Peter Lang, 2002) and “Risk, Disaster and Crisis Reduction: Mobilizing, Collecting and Sharing Information” (with Yvan Leanza, Springer, 2015). She also edited “Habiter les territoires à risques” (with Marion Penelas and Pascal Viot, PPUR, 2011). She has published a book edited with Laurence Creton-Cazanave entitled “La gestion des crises à l’épreuve de l’exercice EU Sequana” (Documentation française, 2017).

Valérie is a geographer by training (PhD, University of Geneva, 2000; Master of Arts, Laval University, Quebec, 1994). Following a post-doctoral fellowship at the Centre for the Sociology of Innovation at the École des Mines de Paris (2001–2002), she worked as a senior lecturer in the Department of Geography at the University of Geneva (2002–2006). She has undertaken research visits to the University of Oxford (School of Geography and the Environment) and the University of East Anglia.

She has initiated several artistic collaborations (see below): An art-science-society exhibition (RiskInsight) in 2012, which toured for five years in Switzerland, France and Italy, and a scientific documentary entitled Les Gardiens du risque (directed by Mélanie Pitteloud), a 30-minute version (2012) and a 15-minute version (2016).