In 2025, the Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics (CEE) welcomed 7 new PhD students, working on topics related to environmental transformations, the rise of populist parties and political cleavages, but also social issues such as child protection or migrant integration, with a European comparative perspective. Discover their profiles and research projects in this article. 

Justine Banégas holds a Sciences Po / UCL dual Bachelor’s degree, and a Master’s degree from Sciences Po’s School of Research in Political Science. Her Master's thesis on French Martinican legal mobilisations against chlordecone toxic exposures was awarded a 2023-2024 AIRE award for student research on the environment at Sciences Po. In her PhD thesis in Comparative Politics, jointly supervised by Sandrine Lefranc and Liora Israël (EHESS), she will study how environmental mobilisations and judicial institutions interact in France and Spain through a trial-based approach to examine how anti-terrorist discourses and instruments are applied to these new mobilisations. 

Raphaël Gialdini was trained in Sociology, History, Philosophy and Law at ENS Paris-Saclay, Université Paris 1 and Sciences Po. His PhD thesis in Political Theory, supervised by Pierre Charbonnier, focuses on the environmental politics of insurance. Using Ulrich Beck's theoretical hypothesis on the link between insurability and modernity as a starting point, he seeks to challenge and complexify this hypothesis, at the interface of Environmental Law, Political Philosophy and the History of Science and Ideas.

Ninon Le Cozannet-Laidin, a Sciences Po graduate (Menton Campus, then School of Research) wrote her Master’s thesis on child protection policy in France, comparing two departments and showing that differing degrees of territorialization shape preventive and participative practices of social workers. In her PhD thesis, jointly supervised by Nathalie Morel and Philippe Bezes, she will enlarge the comparison by considering France and Sweden at national, subnational and social workers’ levels. She wants to uncover why, while both countries promote prevention and voluntary participation of families, they have such diverging outcomes in the implementation of the child protection policy. 

Anna Pereti is a PhD candidate in Political Sociology in a cotutelle programme between Sciences Po (with Tommaso Vitale) and LUISS Guido Carli University (with Kristina Stoeckl). She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy from the University of Florence and a Research Master’s degree in Political Science from Sciences Po, where she wrote a thesis in Comparative Political Economy under the supervision of Colin Hay and Cyril Benoît. Her doctoral research investigates how housing policies shape the local integration of migrants in four European cities—Paris, Marseille, Rome, and Naples. Adopting a comparative perspective between France and Italy, her project examines how different welfare regimes and traditions of urban governance influence migrants’ spatial and social inclusion. 

Alberto Polimeni studied War Studies and Philosophy at King’s College London and Comparative Politics at the LSE. In his PhD thesis, supervised by Colin Hay, he is interested in how populist far right parties influence the policy agendas, framings, and vocabularies of mainstream parties. Specifically, his project will focus on the rhetoric and discourses mobilized by populists, asking if these crisis narratives exert unique forms of pressure on their opponents. His project will use a comparative, mixed-methods approach, combining a quantitative content analysis of party texts with a qualitative study analyzing the decision-making of party elites.

Matthieu Sarnin studied at Sciences Po’s Undergraduate College and School of Research. He then worked at Sciences Po’s Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Evaluation of Public Policies (LIEPP), studying how scientific knowledge is used in environmental policy-making, before being a consultant in public policy evaluation at Quadrant Conseil. His PhD thesis on the governance of green transitions, jointly supervised by Charlotte Halpern and Philippe Bezes, is a continuation of his Master’s thesis on France’s 2022 Energy sufficiency plan. He studies the policy instruments developed in France to steer the ecological transition with the broader aim of understanding the gaps between goals, planning process and implementation results. 

Paul Servais studied Physical Engineering at ULB (Belgium) before turning to Social Sciences at Sciences Po’s Urban School, where he followed the research track. He is interested in understanding how climate change is affecting spaces and territorial cleavages. His Master’s thesis focused on the impact of wind turbine installation on voting behaviours in rural areas. In his PhD thesis, supervised by Jan Rovny, he will broaden his research on how climate change and climate policies impact political behaviours, in France and other European countries.

Find out more

European radical right, overtourism, digital tools in cities, citizen participation: discover the projects of the CEE new PhD students (2024)

Welcome to our 10 new PhD candidates (2023)

In 2022, seven new PhD subjects with a focus on Europe and comparative studies

All the CEE PhD candidates

Doing a PhD thesis at the CEE