research programme

I am working on three main themes in the history of the social sciences, with a special focus on economics: discriminations, values, and expertise.

My first line of research has to describe how economics and economists qualify and separate inequalities into legitimate differences and unfair discriminations, how this distinction evolved since the end of the 19^th century, and what are the consequences of this knowledge. I am currently writing a comprehensive article on the history of the economics of discrimination since the 1940s.

Since my postdoc within the project ‘Expertise under pressure’ at CRASSH at Cambridge (2019-2022), I have been working on the relationships between economics (labor, gender, agglomeration) and policy since the 1970s in the United States and in the United Kingdom. I am currently extanding this research beyond the anglo-american sphere to study the impact (or absence of) of economic knowledge produced in academic economics on policy questions related to poverty, inequality, and discrimination — in Europe and in North Africa.

I am also interested in the entangled nature of epistemic, political and ethical values and how it translates into purposedly value-free knowledge. I studied these questions in individuals’ trajectories as well as in broader phenomenon such as the scientifisation of policy and the politicisation of science.

You will find a complete list of my publications and projects is my CV (May 2022).

work-in-Progress

Contested Values: Economic Expertise in the Comparable Worth Controversy, 1979-1989 / a blogpost on the project is available here

‘Economics is Not a Men’s Field’: A History of the American Economic Association’s Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession / with Béatrice Cherrier & John Singleton / working paper / two related blogposts are available here and here / research mentionned in The Economist (9 January 2020)

A History of Wages / with François Allisson / a blogpost on the project is available here

Programming Expertise: The Political Element in Micro-Simulation, 1969-1989 / with Aurélien Goutsmedt

publications (selection)

[Article] Economists Entered the `Number Games’. The Early Reception of Wage Decomposition Methods in the U.S. Courtrooms, 1971-1989 / Journal of the History of Economic Thought / 2020

[Chapter] ‘Out in the Open’ Controversy: Economists’ Perspectives on the First Gender Reckoning in Economics / with Béatrice Cherrier & John Singleton / in Shelly Lundberg (ed.), Women in Economics, CEPR Press / 2020

[Chapter] Quantifier les inégalités entre données d’enquête et données expérimentales: l’évolution du rôle du chercheur dans la construction de la variable “race” / with Léontine Goldzahl and Charlotte Levionnois / in A. Gramain, & L. Feller (eds.), L’évidence et l’invisible: questions de méthodes en histoire et en économie, Paris: Sorbonne University Press / working paper / 2020 / research featured in Le Monde (24 June 2021)

[Essay] Race in the History of Economics: The Missing Narratives? A Review Essay on Thomas Leonard’s Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics & American Economics in the Progressive Era / Œconomia: History| Methodology| Philosophy / 2020

[Survey] New Scope, New Sources, New Methods? An Essay on Contemporary Scholarship in History of Economic Thought Journals, 2016-2017 / with Catherine Herfeld and Erich Pinzón-Fuchs / CHOPE Working paper 2018-07 / History of Economic Ideas / 2019

[Book review] Patricia Fara, A Lab of One’s Own: Science and Suffrage in the First World War. LSE Review of Books / 2018

[Book review] Paul Erickson, Judy L. Klein, Lorraine Daston, Rebecca Lemov, Thomas Sturm, and Michael D. Gordin, How Reason Almost Lost Its Mind. The Strange Career of Cold War Rationality / Revue européenne des sciences sociales / 2016 

interviews / podcasts

Où sont les femmes économistes ? Ni vues ni connues : portraits d’oubliées / France Culture, Entendez-vous l’éco, by Tiphaine de Rocquigny / 2022

Smith and Marx Walk into a Bar: A History of Economics Podcast, episode 46 / 2021