I wrote my PhD at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence (member of the European university alliance CIVICA), on participatory budgeting, which is a form of institutionalized citizen participation. For my thesis, I did comparative work on participatory budgeting in France, Germany and the UK. I also worked within a European project on participatory budgeting, democracy and public governance. 

After my PhD, I went to Humboldt University, in Berlin, where I had a position as Assistant Professor in general sociology, and studied sociological theory and cultural sociology. 

I was mainly working on the concept of 'conduct of life', coined by Max Weber, and on self-optimisation, this idea of becoming “the best version of yourself”. 

I conducted theoretical and historical research in order to understand the reasons behind the trend of self-optimisation, and to understand how these ideas and practices manifest in people's everyday lives. This led to my habilitation thesis. At Humboldt University, I also held positions as visiting professor for general sociology and for macro sociology. Moreover, I was for several years an associated researcher at the Marc Bloch Centre in Berlin, a French-German research centre in the social sciences.

Two years ago, I came to Saarland University in Saarbrücken, which is located on the French-German border. Border studies and European relations are prominent subjects there.This is how I “reactivated” my research in political sociology and began studying transnational citizen participation.

In my current research project, I study a binational citizen council in the Franco-German border region of the Eurodistrict SaarMoselle. The council began as a pilot project in 2023, funded by the Robert Bosch Foundation through a programme called Common Ground. The council comprises around 20 German citizens living in Saarbrücken and the surrounding area, and an equal number of French citizens from Forbach and the surrounding area.

I find this topic fascinating because democracies are designed for a national context, and because border regions are typically considered the peripheries of nation states. But what if these peripheries could bring democratic innovation to national centres? The European Commission also considers these border regions to be "laboratories for European integration".

My aim is to find out if these hypotheses hold true and to identify the specific challenges and potentials of cross-border citizen participation.

What motivates people to participate in a cross-border citizen council and what prevents them from doing so? Does this transnational experience lead individuals to form stronger cross-border ties? Which concrete difficulties and challenges, along with the resulting opportunities, can be identified in a cross-border environment? 

The citizen council has also made many suggestions for the regional development plan regarding public transport, health provision, cultural events, and so on. It will be interesting to see how these suggestions are translated into political reality.

To achieve this, I will mainly use qualitative methods – interviews with citizens, civil servants and politicians, participant observation in the citizen council, document analysis, etc. 

As this is a Franco-German project, I am thrilled to be working at a French institution. Needless to say, Sciences Po is one of the leading institutions for political sociology research in France today.

More broadly, I think it's always useful to step outside your own national bubble, because academic debates are often still very much rooted in national contexts. I hope to gain new ideas and perspectives on my research subjects here. 

The ongoing debates on democratisation and current political developments in France also make this an interesting time to be here. 

While I am here, I would also like to organise a workshop on the possibilities, challenges and limits of cross-border citizen participation in Europe and hope that scholars at Sciences Po will be interested.