Erell Taranne

Please tell us about your research project.

My doctoral project aims to analyse the spatiality of contemporary environmental civil disobedience movements, from local forms of occupation and the implementation of “concrete alternatives” (Pailloux, 2016) to their integration into networks of resistance at regional, national and transnational scales. It pays particular attention to how these different scales are articulated, as well as to the role played by digital social networks in processes of connection, coordination, and diffusion.

Situated within the field of the geography of social movements, the research focuses on activists’ practices (objects of mobilisation, repertoires of action, mobilities, meeting places, and forms of organisation) and examines the relationships between the globalisation and territorialisation of struggles. It analyses how activist codes and imaginaries circulating at the transnational level are appropriated and reconfigured locally. In a context of increasing legal repression and policing of environmental mobilisations in the United Kingdom and France, it also investigates the effects of the criminalisation of activism on the spatiality of these movements, particularly in terms of adaptation and recomposition.

To analyse these dynamics, the research adopts a mixed-methods approach combining ethnographic fieldwork and quantitative analysis. It is based on multi-sited fieldwork conducted within three recent movements in France and the United Kingdom: Extinction Rebellion, Les Soulèvements de la Terre, and Just Stop Oil, complemented by participant observation in emblematic sites of environmental struggle such as the A69 highway project and the Triangle de Gonesse. The analysis of biographical, residential, and activist trajectories makes it possible to understand the articulation between individual engagements, collective experiences, and network formation. In parallel, social network analysis is used to identify groups across different scales and to reconstruct their ties of solidarity and coordination using digital data. Combined with field observations, this approach highlights patterns of centrality, power asymmetries, and the concrete trajectories through which ideas and practices circulate within these movements.

Could you please tell us a bit more about your scholarship/exchange programme?

I received a three-month mobility grant from EHESS UMIFRE program to conduct a visiting research stay at the Maison Française d’Oxford

First impressions of Oxford/the University?

So far I’m very happy to be in Oxford and truly enjoy the calm environment of the MFO. I look forward to discovering the city in greater depth and taking part in the activities offered by the University and its colleges !