Biography
I am a social anthropologist and an Associate Researcher at the Groupe Sociétés, Religions, Laïcités (GSRL) in Paris. I earned my Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from the École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE–PSL) under the supervision of Professor Michael Houseman. My dissertation, defended in 2025, is entitled « Construire et déconstruire Burning Man : travail et fête au sein du Department of Public Works (DPW) » (Building and Dismantling Burning Man: Work and Festivity within the Department of Public Works (DPW)).
Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork at Burning Man, my research explores ritualized practices, community formation, collective labor, festive environments, highly sensory settings, and relational dynamics.
I created the DPW Storybook and NeoAnthropology websites to document and disseminate interviews with participants in Burning Man—particularly members of the Department of Public Works (DPW), whose contributions have often remained overlooked—as well as participants in transformational festivals. I also produced a short video tracing the historical development of Burning Man.
I am currently expanding this research to contemporary Euro-American ritual practices in order to develop a conceptual framework for understanding how transformative experiences and the sensory intensification of ritual experience are collectively produced. As part of this work, I am developing the concept of aisthema, a heuristic concept for understanding the relational, sensory, and embodied dimensions of transformative experiences.
My academic background is interdisciplinary, spanning psychology (M.A.), philosophy (M.A.), and anthropology (M.A.). My earlier research focused on animism, temporality and kairos, the Kantian sublime, and ritual experience. From 2018 to 2023, I taught Economics and Social Sciences and Philosophy at the Lycée Autogéré de Paris, an alternative public high school founded on the principles of self-governance.