Socio-history of a French marine ecology station. The case of CRIOBE in French Polynesia (M/F)

CNRS; France; Sur place; EUR 30 000 - 40 000; Plein temps

Résumé du poste

A prestigious research institution in France is seeking a postdoctoral researcher to study the socio-history of CRIOBE marine ecology station in Moorea. The role involves conducting interviews, producing literature summaries, and drafting articles for the SciOUTPOSTS project. Applicants should have a PhD in sociology with experience in environmental sociology and fluency in English.

Qualifications

• PhD in sociology with focus on environmental sociology and social studies of science.
• Strong analytical skills to conduct empirical research in socio-history.

Responsabilités

• Conduct an empirical socio-historical survey through interviews and archives.
• Produce a summary of related literature on marine biology.
• Draft reports and articles analyzing materials collected during the survey.

Connaissances

Fluency in English

Social studies of science

Environmental sociology

Formation

Doctorate in Sociology

Description du poste

Overview

Organisation/Company CNRS
Department Centre de recherche et de documentation des Amériques
Research Field Physics
Researcher Profile Recognised Researcher (R2)
Country France
Application Deadline 8 Oct 2025 - 23:59 (UTC)
Type of Contract Temporary
Job Status Full-time
Hours Per Week 35
Offer Starting Date 1 Nov 2025
Is the job funded through the EU Research Framework Programme? Not funded by a EU programme
Is the Job related to staff position within a Research Infrastructure? No

Responsibilities

• Conducting an empirical socio-historical survey through interviews, observation, and archives in Paris, Perpignan, and Moorea.
• Production of a summary of the state of the art in the literature on marine biology stations and scientific sites in French Polynesia.
• Participation in the coordination of the ANR SciOUTPOST project.
• Drafting of a report and drafting or co-drafting of two articles proposing an analysis of the materials collected during the survey, in discussion with the literature on the themes of the SciOUTPOST project.

Context

Within this collective framework, the postdoctoral researcher will conduct a study on the socio-history of the CRIOBE marine ecology station located in Moorea, French Polynesia, which will celebrate its 55th anniversary in 2026.

Created in 1971, CRIOBE is France's leading laboratory for the study of coral ecosystems. It brings together nearly 90 people, including researchers, teacher-researchers, administrative and technical staff from the CNRS, the École Pratiques des Hautes Etudes, and the University of Perpignan. This research and service unit provides greater visibility for French research on coral reefs in relation to environmental issues. Its activities span multiple disciplines, including ecology, genetics, and chemistry, at two main geographical sites: the University of Perpignan campus (metropolitan France) and the field station on the island of Moorea (French Polynesia).

This socio-history will document the sequence of events leading to the creation and choice of location in Moorea and Opunohu Bay, followed by the various stages of institutionalization between circular practices and territorial anchoring, paying particular attention to the five dimensions defining the outposts of science. The analysis should therefore focus more specifically on certain phenomena related to the central themes of the SciOUTPOSTS project, such as the discussion about the “isolation” of this station and the scientific practices that take place there (to what extent is the world of the station an island within an island), or the discussion on the station's territorial footprint (is the scientific site limited to the buildings around the laboratory, or should the multiple stations and the laboratory barge also be taken into account).

Another important challenge will be to better characterize how CRIOBE (research support unit UAR3278) is managed remotely by three French institutions, but also how it has been integrated into what research policies refer to as “major research infrastructure” through the CNRS-INEE RéNSEE network of experimental ecology stations and other scientific infrastructures. This socio-history of CRIOBE will therefore also need to be integrated into the study of the CNRS's redeployment in the French overseas territories over the last twenty years. The research should explore the tension between this integration into generic categories of French research policy and the particularities of its functioning in a peripheral territory such as Moorea.

Finally, the researcher will be asked to propose a comparison between the management and territorial anchoring modes of CRIOBE and the “Gump Station” managed by the University of California and also located in Moorea, in order to contribute to the project's focus on comparing French and US scientific outposts.

Project context

This postdoctoral position is part of the SciOUTPOSTS project (https://scioutpost.hypotheses.org/), funded by the ANR (2023-2027) and coordinated by David Dumoulin Kervran. SciOUTPOSTS brings together sociologists of science and labor to test the notion of “science outposts” through empirical surveys as a means of characterizing sites of scientific production typical of imperial expansionism that do not correspond to the laboratory, field, or expedition models. The surveys conducted by each of the 11 researchers bring together to enable a unique comparison between tropical biology and marine biology stations, volcanological observatories, astronomical observatories, meteorological stations, Arctic and Antarctic bases, as well as certain more preliminary scientific sites, such as “excavation houses” in archaeology or scientific base projects in space.

This comparative collective research, focused on French overseas territories, explores five dimensions of these places of activity: their materiality (the outposts are equipped with buildings designed for continuous occupation for scientific purposes); their geography (they are located in territories far from metropolitan areas and relatively difficult to access); their politics (the establishment of these bases meets scientific objectives, but also fits into a more general political framework, particularly guiding scientists' links with local societies); their sociability (these sites induce a particular collective life, marked by the intertwining of private and professional spaces); their epistemology (scientific practices rooted in the territorial specificity of the outposts are designed to produce universal knowledge).

Qualifications

• Doctorate level (bac+8): a one-year postdoctoral contract is offered to a doctor of sociology. A good command of both social studies of science and environmental sociology will be particularly appreciated. Fluency in English is required.
• Thesis discipline: Sociology of science (environmental sociology, political sociology, organizational sociology)