I am a doctor in social anthropology affiliated with the GSRL laboratory (Groupe Sociétés, Religions, Laïcités), Paris. I hold a PhD in anthropology from École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE)-PSL under the supervision of Pr Michael Houseman. My dissertation, defended in 2025, is entitled Constructing and Deconstructing Burning Man: Work and Festivity within the Department of Public Works (DPW) (Construire et déconstruire Burning Man : travail et fête au sein du Department of Public Works (DPW)).
Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork conducted at Burning Man, my research focuses on community identity, ritualized set-ups, collective labor, festive environments, high sensory settings, and relational dynamics. I created www.dpwstorybook.com and www.neoanthropology.com in order to document and valorize interviews with actors involved in Burning Man, including the often invisible DPW group, as well as transformational festival actors. I also produced a short video retracing the evolution of Burning Man.
I now extend this research to contemporary Euro-American ritual practices in order to develop a conceptual framework aimed at understanding the mechanisms through which experiences of self-transformation and the sensory intensification of ritual experience are collectively produced within contemporary ritual settings.
My academic background is interdisciplinary, spanning psychology (MA), philosophy (MA), and anthropology (MA), with previous research focusing on animism, temporality, Kant’s sublime, and ritual experience. I taught social sciences and philosophy from 2018 to 2023 at Lycée Autogéré de Paris, an alternative self-managed public high school in Paris.