2018, a year that has fulfilled its promises?
The report we are presenting to you, for the second year in a row, illustrates the power and diversity of our activities during a scientific season that could usually be described as, if not mistaken, the daily life of the social science research factory. In a hive like ours, it is never "business as usal", especially when it comes to producing new knowledge about society.
Four international symposia, about ten study days and more than 100 seminars - including about ten organized by our doctoral students.es, the organization of two thematic schools of major international networks (the Public Policy Association and the Association pour la Science Régionale de Langue Française) have punctuated a regular agenda... Strong from the scientific and organizational reorganization of the Pact carried out in 2017, the members of the unit have been able to take advantage of the stability of their working environment to produce more than 500 publications, but also films, video productions, and continue to invent hybrid forms of co-construction of research, including with actors from the political or socio-political world.
The year was marked by festive events, including the celebration of the 70th anniversary of the Institut d'Études Politiques de Grenoble, with which the Pacte laboratory was associated. Structuring cultural partnerships, in particular with the Paysages - Paysage festival (season organised by the Département de l'Isère https://www.paysage-paysages.fr/) or the critical Géopolitique festival, make it possible to consolidate research-creation projects. Coordinated with many local partners, including the City of Grenoble and the Grenoble-Alpes Metropolis, the symposium on the Good Life, coupled with an associative forum and a wonderful window on civil society, reflects the social catalytic force that a research laboratory like ours can play.
With a strong presence in the analysis of themes relating to democracy, citizenship, migration and borders, urban and territorial dynamics, the Pacte laboratory produces research that takes into account the ups and downs of current political events, as shown by an unpublished study on Yellow Vests published in the middle of the crisis, based on surveys conducted on social networks. Engaged in multidisciplinary partnerships in the fields of health, risks and policies of nature, territorial ecology or the energy transition of territories, but also the societal impact of Big Data, we contribute, through our innovative positioning, to advancing the role of SHS in large-scale scientific collaborations, in response to the ambitions of the Grenoble IDEX project. With a strong presence in cultural areas in Europe, but also in the Americas, the Middle East and Africa, Pact researchers are also engaged in critical postures that are relevant to international debates on the status of post-colonial studies, gender approaches, etc. The scope of our unit allows us to use a wide variety of methodological approaches and a reflexive approach to it, allowing us to capitalize on forms of experimentation (social networks, images, video, writing, textual data, life courses, focus groups).
The projects deployed in our laboratory, which now focus on Europe (ERC, H2020, Interreg), continue to build strong relationships with our partners, both territorial and national (notably with PUCA, the Ministry of Ecological Transition and ADEME). They are all marked by a very specific relationship to public action: little research on the Pact that is not carried out in co-construction with the actors and publics concerned. This allows us to free ourselves from an ordering relationship and to be able to propose ways of getting to know each other that can support both public and private authorities, as well as citizen and association collectives. Along with an in-depth reflection on the transformation of professions, those of the people who accompany us (urban planners, humanitarian workers) as well as those we analyse (butchers, journalists), our work therefore accompanies societal and territorial transformations through analysis, criticism and foresight.
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