Evan A. FISHER

Postdoctoral Fellowship in Sociology and Science and Technology Studies

Contact details

Personal Website
evanandrewfisher.wordpress.com

Taught academic discipline(s)

  • 2019-2020 (48 h) : Adjunct Teaching (48 h), Sciences Po Paris – Reims Campus. Course title: Introduction to Sociology (taught in English). Level: Undergraduate Year 1.
  • 2016-2019 (192 h) : Tutorials (64 h × 3 years) as part of the doctoral contract, Mines ParisTech, PSL University. Course title: Description of Sociotechnical Controversies. Level: Undergraduate Year 3 (1st year of the Civil Engineering cycle).
  • 2016-2019 (72 h) : Tutoring (24 h × 3 years) as part of the doctoral contract, Mines ParisTech – PSL University. Course title: Societies, Histories, Cultures. Level: Master’s Year 1 (2nd year of the Civil Engineering cycle).
  • 2016-2017 (24 h) : Tutoring (24 h), École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS). Course title: The Migratory Experience: Collective Fieldwork in Partnership with the “Paris Collective for the Support of Exiled Persons”. Level: Master’s Year 1, tracks in General Sociology; Ethnology and Social Anthropology; Gender, Politics, Sexuality; Territories, Spaces, Societies.

Research topics

Themes :
Anthropology and history of field sciences, public health and climate emergencies, care ethics, anthropology of the global
 

Current research project :

BENDYS, or The last European old-growth (“subnatural”) fir-BEech forests: a loNg-term and global stuDY for their better understanding, conServation and management

Link to project website : https://anr-bendys.cnrs.fr
 

Biography :


My doctoral dissertation, defended in June 2020 at PSL Research University – Mines ParisTech, is an ethnographic monograph of the French NGO Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).It describes how these humanitarian practitioners manage to improvise between the sometimes incompatible objectives of an apparently simple mission: providing medical assistance to vulnerable people wherever they may be. To this end, I asked MSF how it selects the people it wishes to assist around the world. My answer involved a detailed description of the instrumentation of triage: the problematic processes of developing and using the tools that support the reflexive selection of beneficiaries worldwide. This led me to develop the concept of humanitarian presence, intended to address the set of interdependent issues raised by MSF’s global physical expansion, its modes of relating to beneficiaries through an ethics of attention, and its political interventions in governing bodies and in the bodies of the governed.

From October 2020 to March 2021, I participated as a postdoctoral researcher in the establishment of the Ad Memoriam research center of the Covid‑19 Institute under the auspices of the World Health Organization and the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD). Under the supervision of Laëtitia Atlani‑Duault, anthropologist and member of the French government’s Covid‑19 Scientific Council, I developed and tested a research protocol intended for use by social science researchers to collect and archive the institutional memory of the Covid‑19 pandemic in France. I also contributed to the development of an online platform to collect and archive the memories that ordinary French citizens across the country retained from the pandemic.

In April 2021, I began a postdoctoral position in the GEODE laboratory at the University of Toulouse Jean‑Jaurès, working on the BENDYS research project on the last European old‑growth forests in the Pyrenees and the Carpathians. With Ruppert Vimal as advisor, I have two activities:
  • I am conducting a literature review of work in environmental and life sciences on European Old‑Growth Forests (VFO), with attention to the historical narratives and historical regimes highlighted by the various disciplines working on VFO.
  • I am conducting an ethnographic investigation with a team of environmental and life scientists (biogeochemistry, ecology, biology, geology), social science specialists (sociology, anthropology, geography, history, archaeology, STS), as well as forest managers in France and Romania, on the links between the production of scientific expertise and forest management policies and practices.

Activities / Resume

Invitations to Participate in Research Seminars:

  • 2/2020 : Invitation to the workshop “Health, Sciences, and Globalization” at EHESS. Organizers: Matheus Alves Duarte Silva, Alila Brossard Antonielli, Laïs Caminoto Geiser, Koichi Kameda De Carvalho, Shiori Nosaka. Title of the presentation: “Doing Humanitarian ‘Fieldwork’. Explo/action at Médecins Sans Frontières.”
  • 4/2019 :Participation in the writing workshop “Writing Care,” in the “Anthropology of Care” department at the University of Amsterdam. Organized by Anne Skeide and Jeannette Pols. Workshop theme: Controlling Care, Caring Control. Title of the paper: “The ‘Hysterics’ of Triage. Towards a Situational Ethics of Emergency Triage.”
  • 11/2018 : Invitation to the research seminar “Beneficence and the Government of the Social,” EHESS. Organized by Sylvain Bordiec, Leila Drif, Erwin Flaureau, Nathan Jobert, Laura Ruiz de Elvira, and Sahar Aurore Saeidnia. Session theme: Gift‑giving tested by the relations between those who give and those who receive.

Scientific Communications:

  • 8/2020 :Co‑organizer and discussant of a panel at the biannual conference of the Society for the Social Studies of Science (4S) with the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST) (with Vololona Rabeharisoa, Nassima Abdelghafour, and Félix Boilève). Panel theme: Inquiries into the Global: Making Global Government, Making Global Knowledge. Title of my presentation: “The Epistemic Infrastructure of Global Aid: Working Through the Otherworldliness of the Humanitarian Field”.
  • 8/2019 : Annual Congress of the French Sociological Association (AFS). Aix‑en‑Provence, France. RT 19 Health, Medicine, Illness and Disability: “Resistances to Classification Processes: Between Ethical Problems and Epistemic Issues.” Title of the paper: The “Hysterics” of Triage. In an Emergency Room of Médecins Sans Frontières.
  • 7/2019 : Annual Congress of the European Group for Organizational Studies (EGOS). Edinburgh, Scotland. Panel: Valuation, Strategy and Organization. Title of the paper and presentation: “Strategy Practice in a Humanitarian NGO. Calculating Value and Choosing a Way Forward for MSF’s TB Activities in Kenya”.
  • 8/2018 : Biannual Congress of the Society for the Social Studies of Science (4S). Sydney, Australia. Panel: Transnational Humanitarianism: "Without borders”? The Future of Global Health and Transnational Humanitarianism. Title of the paper and presentation: “Making Space for Care. The Ordering of Attention in MSF’s Middle East Transnational Patient Recruitment Network.”

Publications extraites de HAL affiliées à Geode : Géographie de l'environnement