New (French) Voices on Pollution and Environmental Justice
4 October 2024 – 12:30-14:00 CET – Zoom
Environmental History Today Webinar Series 2024-2025 – European Society for Environmental History
In this session, four early-career researchers (doctoral students and recent graduates) based in France will share their research on pollution and/or environmental justice. Lucile Truffy, a doctoral student at Sciences-Po, will share her work on the history of plastics; Eugénie Clément, who is about to defend her thesis at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), will present her anthropological and historical research on the environmental struggles of the Navajo nation in the US. Dr Yaël Gagnepain, who defended his PhD at the university of Lille in 2023, will introduce his work on the pollution and flooding caused by the discharges of Roubaix’s textile industry in the 19th and 20th centuries. Finally, Dr Louis Fagon, a recent EHESS PhD, will tell us more about the nuclearization of the Rhône River from the 1970s to the 1990s.
The history of pollution and environmental justice are two themes that were pioneered in France by Professor Geneviève Massard-Guilbaud, author (among other publications) of Histoire de la pollution industrielle : France, 1789-1914 (2010) and Environmental and Social Justice in the City: historical perspectives (2011, with Richard Rodger) and former president of ESEH. By celebrating the research pursued in these two subfields by “new voices”, we want to acknowledge her important role in opening up new areas of studies for scholars in France and elsewhere.
This will also be the opportunity to present the book recently published in her honor: Le Chemin, La rive et L’usine: Faire de l’histoire environnementale avec Geneviève Massard-Guilbaud (Presses des Mines, 2023).
Speakers: Eugénie Clément (EHESS, Mondes Américains/CENA), Dr. Louis Fagon (EHESS/Université Paris Nanterre), Dr. Yaël Gagnepain (ENS, CERES), Lucile Truffy (Sciences Po Paris)
Chair: Dr Elsa Devienne (Northumbria University/regional representative for France at ESEH)

Latest posts by NiCHE Administrators (see all)
- Virtual Event – Waste, Epidemics, and Human Health in Environmental Studies - November 5, 2025
- Call for Applicants – Vimy Pilgrimage Award - November 4, 2025
- Call for Applicants – ASEH 2026 Travel Grants - October 31, 2025
- Appel à communication – Genre et environnement – Colloque international du RUCHE - October 29, 2025
- Virtual Event – Policies and Programs: Deindustrialization and the Environment - October 29, 2025
- Call for Papers: Self | Other | History – Canadian Historical Association | Société historique du Canada 2026 - October 2, 2025
- Call for Proposals – Urban and Environmental Dialogues - September 29, 2025
- Applicants Sought for Editor of Environmental History - September 27, 2025
- Online Event – The War-driven Environmental Destruction in Ukraine: Naming, Understanding, Witnessing - September 23, 2025
- Online Event – Plants, Memory, Belonging - September 19, 2025