My research lies at the intersection of political sociology, the sociology of gender and race, and the sociology of work and organizations.
My first research book, La bataille de la parité: mobilisations pour la féminisation du pouvoir (Paris, Economica, 2015, in French), examines the campaign that led to the passage of the 2000 French gender parity law, which mandated 50% gender quotas for most political elections. Drawing on this case study, I developed the concept of women’s cause field, which refers to the relational structure of groups mostly devoted to the advancement of women in a variety of social settings, cutting across the line between civil society and political institutions. Beyond the case of the women’s movement, it provides a new framework – the notion of cause field – to capture the architecture of specialized collective protest in the era of movement institutionalization, distinct from, and complementary to, the concept of social movement (see my article in Social Movement Studies).
My second research book, Managing Corporate Virtue: The Politics of Workplace Diversity in New York and Paris (Oxford University Press, 2025) offers an in-depth, historical and comparative study of workplace diversity programs in the United States and France. This is an enriched translation of a book originally published in French: Le management de la vertu. La diversité en entreprise à New York et à Paris (Presses de Sciences Po, 2023). I published several articles drawing on this research project, including, in English, in Ethnic & Racial Studies and in Entreprises & histoire.
Between 2021 and 2026, I coordinated a research project funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR), titled “Professionals of the Virtue of Capitalism” (PROVIRCAP). Together with the 12 other researchers on the team, we explored the professional field of CSR practitioners, primarily in France. We focused on professionals who carry out activities signalling corporate virtue, within or close to large companies: sustainability, human rights, D&I, well-being at work, philanthropy, and responsible investing. We combined qualitative methods (over 200 interviews, observations in professional social settings) and quantitative methods (web scraping of résumés, questionnaire survey). In this collective research project, I particularly worked on D&I and sustainability professionals. Visit the PROVIRCAP research blog to learn more about our activities, findings, and publications.