LATTS is pleased to announce that Bernard Augey’s thesis defence will take place on Wednesday 1 July 2026 at 2.00 pm at the Paris School of Urban Planning, on the Cité Descartes campus. His thesis is entitled:

“The agile transformation of an IT department: changes to the organisation, management and business functions within Pôle Emploi’s Information Systems Department”

This doctoral thesis was carried out at the LATTS, under the supervision of Pascal Ughetto, Professor at Gustave Eiffel University.

Composition of the jury

• Bénédicte Geffroy, Professor of Business and Management Sciences, IMT Atlantique, Examiner
• Cécile Guillaume, Associate Professor of Employment Relations at the University of Surrey, Rapporteur
• Gilles Jeannot, Professor, École nationale des ponts et chaussées, Examiner
• Pascal Ughetto, Professor of Sociology, Gustave Eiffel University, PhD supervisor
• Philippe Paumard, Head of the Skills, Training & IT Educational Engineering Department, France Travail, Deputy Director-General for Technology

Abstract of the thesis

Since the 2010s, the IT departments of large organizations—much like many large corporate groups as a whole—have increasingly sought to adopt so-called agile methods for their project management principles and practices. Many refer to this as an “agile transformation” that needs to be implemented. This thesis examines the case of the IT department at Pôle Emploi, focusing on the change trajectory intended to steer the organization toward this agility. This research provides an opportunity to document the conditions and modalities of this change. It also offers the possibility of contributing to a better understanding of the work of IT professionals and their professional identities within the context of working in the IT department of a large company. The thesis is based on interviews with stakeholders at all levels of this IT department and on observations of projects conducted according to the relevant methodologies. Based on observations of IT work in progress and interviews with its actors, the study examines the information systems department at Pôle Emploi, an organization facing the destabilization of its former monopoly on the job market and calling for a digital transformation of its services. Its IT department has seized on an agile mode that was already latent within it to align itself with the institution’s strategy by carrying out an agile transformation at the departmental level. The examination of the trajectory of change highlights the importance of returning to the conceptual models of agile development. The trajectory is, indeed, made up of two paths, one relating to a scope limited to a single team, simple agility, and the other aiming at the coordination of several agile teams, agility at scale. The thesis reports on these two paths, which intersect in a dynamic of agile transformation of IT management. A diversity of deployment emerges, both in the hybridization and concerted use of several simple agility methods and in the articulation of these hybridizations with agility at scale, which is deployed uniformly and remains close to the initial model. With the agile mode, the IT profession, and more particularly the activity of developers, is certainly changing, but it also retains areas of stability that persist and constitute new links between old and new professional benchmarks. If there is a transformation, it is taking place through new spaces for socialization brought about as much by the implementation of agile methods and the new work situations they generate as by the company’s own systems. This transformation of practices and identities is reinforced by the integration of the elements that drive it into the strategic line of management. Agile transformation is not just a matter for developers and IT specialists who make up their professional group. The management line, even if it can be considered part of this group in terms of its front-line managers, is subject to a two-stage change brought about by agility. First confronted with simple agility, then embracing agility at scale, it has been part of the various stages of the transformation movement, adapting and rebuilding the meaning of its function. At the same time, the human resources function is faced with the dual necessity of supporting internal change and ensuring compliance with the framework set by the company.

The article Bernard Augey’s thesis defence first appeared on LATTS - Laboratory for Territorial and Societal Techniques.

The LATTS is pleased to announce that Lauren Dixon’s thesis defence will take place on Friday the 11th of September 2026 at 1:30, at the École nationale des ponts et chaussées (room V303), on the Cité Descartes campus. Her thesis is entitled:

‘The Day-to-Day Management of the City in the Context of Psychoactive Substance Use in Parisian Public Spaces’

This doctoral thesis was carried out at the LATTS, under the supervision of Elsa Vivant, Professor of Urban Studies.

Composition of the jury

• Thomas Alguilera, Senior Lecturer, Sciences Po Rennes, Examiner
• Delphine Corteel, Professor, University of Tours, Examiner
• Geoffrey Deverteuil, Professor, Cardiff University, Rapporteur
• Tommaso Vitale, Dean, Sciences Po Paris Urban School, Rapporteur
• Djemila Zeneidi, Research Director, CNRS, Examiner

Abstract of the thesis

This dissertation explores the relationship between drug policy and urban planning, bringing together key questions in political science and urban studies around territoriality, governance, and the management of the contemporary city. Using Paris as a case study, it examines how public space is planned, managed, and maintained in the context of open-air substance use, focusing in particular on how City services (sanitation, green spaces, parks and gardens) navigate streets and squares that are simultaneously sites of everyday urban life and places where people use substances. The dissertation establishes a direct link between drug policy and urban planning through the figure of municipal workers responsible for maintenance, sanitation, and landscaping, who are routinely confronted with substance use in public space. Since the early 2000s, people who use substances have been concentrated in the northeast of Paris, yet regularly displaced through evictions and police interventions. Within a French legal framework that prohibits both the sale and consumption of illicit drugs, substance use remains highly stigmatised and politically charged. When municipal agents encounter substance use in the course of their work, they are drawn into a complex and fragmented governance network. New protocols emerge, and maintenance services are brought into contact with actors outside their traditional field (private companies, police, health professionals, harm reduction workers, researchers…). Drug policy thus becomes an unexpected terrain for public space workers, reshaping day-to-day urban management and entangling street-level maintenance in broader political conflicts over how drugs and public space are governed.

The article Lauren Dixon’s thesis defence first appeared on LATTS - Laboratory for Territorial and Societal Techniques.

The LATTS is pleased to announce that François Allain’s PhD thesis defence will take place on Thursday 2 April 2026 at 2.00 pm, in room B202 (Carnot building) at the École nationale des ponts et chaussées, on the Cité Descartes campus. The defence will last approximately three hours and will be conducted in French. His thesis is entitled:

‘Restoring credibility to a controversial instrument. An investigation into local and national carbon offsetting in France’

This sociology thesis was completed at the LATTS under the supervision of Olivier Coutard.

A video conference is available to the public via the following link: https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/32588732252073?p=F5ruCuSrlWDUc32h7O

Composition of the jury

• Stéphanie Barral, Research Fellow, INRAE/LISIS (Examiner)
• Olivier Coutard, Research Director, CNRS/LATTS (PhD supervisor)
• Marie Hrabanski, Research Director, University of Montpellier CIRAD/Art-Dev (Rapporteur)
• Alice Mazeaud, Senior Lecturer, University of La Rochelle/LIENSs (Rapporteur)
• François-Mathieu Poupeau, Research Director, CNRS/LATTS (Examiner)

Abstract of the thesis

This research examines the emergence of public carbon offset schemes at national and local level in France at the turn of the 2020s. A range of stakeholders develop certification frameworks and buy and sell carbon credits in the agriculture and forestry sectors, with the aim of facilitating processes to reduce emissions or sequester carbon dioxide in biomass. This study seeks to understand how awareness of the controversies surrounding this type of instrument shapes the development of these schemes by public authorities and private actors in France.
The research employs a qualitative methodology, comprising forty-seven semi-structured interviews, thirty-seven observed meetings (observation and participant observation) and visits to eight project sites. The study was structured around interviews selected to represent the full range of stakeholders involved in these schemes: administrative departments of central and local government, local elected representatives, intermediaries (technical, administrative and financial), businesses, farmers and forest owners. The intertwining of issues of quantification, certification and economic valuation in situations of controversy and uncertainty makes this a cross-cutting research topic. Drawing on tools at the interface between the sociology of public action, the study of science and technology in society (STS) and the sociology of environmental discourses, the study examines the trade-offs made by public and private actors regarding CO2e quantification, the consideration of risks and uncertainties, certification and economic valuation.
This thesis examines several dimensions through which these actors seek to restore credibility to a contested instrument: the argument of co-construction (Chapters 1 and 2), the argument regarding the precision of quantifications and the quantitative consideration of uncertainties (thresholds, discounts) within the general framework and sectoral methods (Chapters 3, 4 and 5), the tool of semantic renewal (Chapter 6) and, finally, the argument for the moralisation of practices through the implementation of value charters (Chapter 7).

The article François Allain’s thesis defence first appeared on LATTS - Laboratory for Territorial and Societal Techniques.

Post-socialist urban transformations in Saint Petersburg: The advance of urban authoritarianism through urban renewal

This thesis was completed at LATTS, under the supervision of Elsa Vivant and co-supervision of Martine Drozdz.

Composition of the jury:

• Béatrice VON HIRSCHHAUSEN, CNRS Research Director, Géographie-cités/Centre Marc Bloch (Rapporteur)
• Martin MÜLLER, University Professor, University of Lausanne (Rapporteur)
• Elsa VIVANT, University Professor, Gustave Eiffel University (Thesis Supervisor)
• Martine DROZDZ, CNRS Researcher, LATTS/French House of Oxford (Co-supervisor of thesis)
• Claire CARRIOU, University Professor, University of Paris-Est Créteil (Examiner)
• Lydia COUDROY DE LILLE, University Professor, Lumière Lyon 2 University (Examiner)
• Ozan KARAMAN, CNRS Research Fellow, LATTS (Examiner)
• Perrine POUPIN, Research Fellow, CNRS, CRESSON (ENSA Grenoble) (Examiner)

Summary of the thesis:

This thesis examines post-socialist urban transformations in Saint Petersburg through the lens of the renovation of Soviet architectural heritage, which reveals the rise of urban authoritarianism. Using a mixed methodology – combining interviews, observation, mapping, statistics, network analysis and online ethnography – it explores the political, economic and social forces that have shaped the city since the fall of the USSR. The research highlights the gradual commercialisation of the ‘socialist city’, while challenging the dominant narratives of neoliberalisation, revealing in particular the clientelist and authoritarian dynamics of urban power at work in the demolition and reconstruction projects of Soviet buildings. The Narvskaya Zastava neighbourhood, a former emblematic working-class area, serves as the main case study for analysing the resulting tensions between heritage preservation and urban transformation.

Based on both fieldwork and digital research, the thesis shows that heritage becomes a strategic space for contesting authoritarianism and forced politicisation. Architectural, historical and legal expertise is mobilised as a political resource by residents, activists, professionals and, sometimes, representatives of the authorities, thus revealing the internal flaws and tensions of the authoritarian state. However, the study highlights the plurality of rationales that structure residents’ reactions, whether favourable or opposed to renovation projects, and reveals post-socialist social relations that are much more complex than a simple opposition between winners and losers of economic liberalisation.

The article Thesis defence by Olga Suslova first appeared on LATTS - Laboratory for Territorial and Societal Techniques.

Privacy in the smart city: what is the problem? Privacy issues in the effective trajectory of a smart city: the case of Dijon.

This thesis in sociology was completed at LATTS, under the supervision of Alexandre Mathieu-Fritz and co-supervision of Sylvie Douzou (Senior Researcher at EDF R&D).

Composition of the jury:

• Corinne Delmas, University Professor, Gustave Eiffel University – LATTS (Chair of the jury)
• Florence Millerand, Professor, University of Quebec in Montreal (Rapporteur)
• Gérald Gaglio, University Professor, Université Côte d’Azur (Rapporteur)
• Alexandre Mathieu-Fritz, University Professor, Gustave Eiffel University (Thesis Supervisor)
• Éric Dagiral, Senior Lecturer, Paris Cité University (Examiner)
• Antoine Courmont, Senior Lecturer, Gustave Eiffel University – LATTS (Examiner)
• Cécile Caron, Research Engineer in Sociology, GRETS–SEQUOIA, EDF R&D (Guest Member)

Summary of the thesis:

The rise of smart cities reveals a fundamental tension between the promise of urban data integration and the requirements for data compartmentalisation, particularly when services rely on the use of personal information. Smart city policies promote the fluid and cross-cutting flow of data within integrated infrastructures, while a set of regulations—notably the French Data Protection Act (1978) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR, 2018)—strictly govern the conditions for data collection, use and storage. This work shows that, beyond a simple opposition between technological imaginaries and legal norms, issues related to the production, circulation, use and protection of data that may affect individuals’ privacy directly contribute to shaping the technical architectures, modes of governance and methods of appropriation of smart city projects.

The core of this research is based on empirical data collected in Dijon (France) between January 2019 and February 2022, combining ethnographic observations in public spaces, participant observations in work meetings, individual and group interviews with project stakeholders, and a questionnaire on digital technology, smart cities and privacy. Based on this case study (Chapter 1), the thesis analyses how privacy is distributed, expressed and embodied in the different phases of design, deployment and maintenance of a smart city. From the point of view of operational stakeholders, it initially appears to be a non-issue (chapter 2): little discussed politically, presented as under control from the design stage, rarely raised by technical operators and largely absent from citizens’ concerns. This discretion leads us to question the conditions under which privacy issues remain invisible. The notion of “socio-technical ambiguity” is a central analytical tool here, mobilised across five entries: the stages of the project (chapter 3), thematic projects (chapter 4), actors (chapter 5), technical devices (chapter 6) and the data itself (chapter 7).

As far as residents are concerned (chapters 8 and 9), the smart city does not spark local public controversy, as it remains discreet, integrated into an already dense digital environment and barely noticeable in everyday life. Residents report a diffuse, localised and rarely politicised approach to these issues.

This work highlights that, in Dijon, privacy protection relies less on a unified framework than on the fragmented structure of the project’s activities themselves. We refer to this dynamic as the “paradox of fragmentation”: it constitutes both a limitation on the integration of urban data and an effective mechanism for protecting individuals. While this fragmentation restricts the expected performance of integrated infrastructures, it simultaneously helps to contain the circulation of personal data.

Part of the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS), this research shows that privacy acts as a discreet but structuring operator, actively participating in shaping the technical architectures, organisational arrangements and forms of appropriation of smart cities.

The article Thesis defence by Sofia Laborde first appeared on LATTS - Laboratory for Territorial and Societal Techniques.