Émilie Biland-Curinier combines sociology and political science to study how organizations and professional groups take part to the unequal dynamics that reshape contemporary societies. At the crossroads of critical policy analysis and socio-legal studies, she takes interest in the mechanisms that frame individuals in their family life (marital separations, parentage) and in their professional experiences (hiring paths, pandemic law). Her work underlines the causes and consequences of these processes in terms of class, gender, sexual and racial hierarchies.

Over the period 2019-2024, she is a fellow of the IUF – Institut Universitaire de France – in order to accomplish a research project entitled: Minority Rights On The Ground. LGBTQ Parents And The Law From One Continent To Another. Since 2021, she has also been coordinating a research project on the legal experiences of lay people during the pandemic.

Based on fieldwork experiences in several countries (Canada, Chile, the United States, France) and within numerous teams, her scholarship also deals with epistemology and methodology. She writes on international comparisons, multi-methods research designs, public sociology and collective scholarship.

Read her interview on her arrival at the CSO 

Other activities

Career path

Since 2019
Full Professor at Sciences Po

Since 2014
Adjunct Professor at Laval University (Quebec City, Canada)

2019-2024
Research Fellow at the Institut Universitaire de France

2014-2019
Associate Professor at the University of Rennes 2

2010-2014
Assistant Professor, Laval University (Quebec City, Canada)

Invited Positions

Catholic University of Chile (2019 and 2022), University Paris-Dauphine (2014), University of Tampere (Finland, 2009)

education

2017: Habilitation (HDR), University of Strasbourg 

2008: PhD in sociology, EHESS (with highest honors)

2004: Master degree in social sciences, ENS/EHESS (with highest honors)

2001: Master degree (1st year) in sociology, University Paris-Descartes (with highest honors)

2000-2001: Exchange student at the City University of New York (Hunter College and the Graduate Center)

1999-2004: Scholarship student at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris

2000: BA in sociology, University Paris-Descartes; BA in economics, University Pantheon-Sorbonne

Intermédiaires du droit et parents LGBTQ+

Class, Gender and Race: Inequalities and Intersections, master degree lecture

Gender and Sexuality, research seminar, master degree in sociology [j'ai supprimé un caractère superflu : <]

Discrimination & Inequality, 1st year lecture, Paris campus (2020-2023)

Gender, Sexuality & Organizations, seminar, school of public affairs (2020-2022)

Sociology of the Family, research seminar, master degree in sociology (2020-2022)

Social Relations in Public Administration, 2^nd year seminar, Paris campus (2019-20)

• Family Law in Action. Divorce and Inequality in Quebec and France, UBC Press, 2023.
• Gouverner la vie privée. L’encadrement inégalitaire des séparations conjugales en France et au Québec, ENS-Editions, 2019. https://hal-sciencespo.archives-ouvertes.fr/CSO/hal-03051493
• La fonction publique territoriale, La découverte, coll. « Repères », 2019 [première édition 2012]. 
  https://hal-sciencespo.archives-ouvertes.fr/CSO/hal-03222316
• « Are Judges Street-Level Bureaucrats ? Evidence from French and Canadian Family Courts. » (avec H. Steinmetz), Law and Social Inquiry, 2017, v. 42, n°2, p. 298-324 : https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/lsi.12251 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01448688
• « Government Lawyers and the Training of Senior Civil Servants: Maintaining Law at the Heart of the French State. » (avec R. Vanneuville), International Journal of the legal profession, 2012, v.19, n°1, p.29-54 : https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09695958.2013.771121
  https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00813927

All publications

Recent talks

- Annual Meeting, Research Committee on Sociology of Law, International Sociological Association, Lunds University, Sweden, 2023:

• Family, Policy and the Law: round-table on her latest book Family Law in Action
• Gender and Judging : Changing the Chilean kinship law: When the feminist legal agenda meets sexual minorities’ claims (avec J. Hersant)

- International Sociology Association Conference, Melbourne, Australia, 2023 : Does remote social work increase labor conflicts? Evidence from social workers’ pandemic experiences in France (with C. Gardes & J. Pélisse)

- Canadian Political Science Association Conference, University of York, 2023 : Law, Blood, and Custody: Sexual Minority Mothers Challenging Heteronormativity (with J. Bouchard & K. Lavoie)

- Gender and Wealth Inequality Network (GWIN) workshop, European Consortium of Sociological Research, Birmingham School of Social Policy, United-Kingdom, 2023: How Child Maintenance and Social Benefits Shape Wealth Inequalities after Divorce. A Cross-National Comparison (France-Quebec)

• Global Meeting on Law and Society, Lisboa, CRN39 Everyday Legality, 2022 : For the Sake of Workers and Families? : How French Legal Intermediaries Have Reinvented Everyday Legality during the Pandemic Crisis (with C. Gardes & J. Pélisse)
• Feminism, Law and Citizenship Conferece, Université Paris 1-Sorbonne, 2022 : From invisibility to reproductive citizenship? Legal struggles by lesbian mothers in Chile