Lucile Truffy

My PhD thesis focuses on polyethylene and its famous alter ego, the plastic bag, in late 20th-century France. Their emergence and subsequent triumph in retail and domestic consumption transformed commercial and social practices, and lay at the heart of a ‘plastic age’. However, polyethylene also epitomised the ‘throwaway society’, which can now be observed on a sedimentary level. By combining economic and environmental history to examine this multifaceted material revolution, my research aims to fill a historiographical lacuna surrounding plastics, and to shed a new light on consumer society from the aftermath of the Second World War to the early 21st century.

CURRICULUM VITAE

Since 2024: PhD candidate at the Centre for History at Sciences Po

2024: Agrégation in history, rank: 13

2023: Master's degree in history at Sciences Po, summa cum laude

Thesis title: The plastic bag odyssey. An economic and environmental history of polyethylene in France (1951-2005)

Supervisors: Giacomo Parrinello (CHSP) and Marie-Emmanuelle Chessel (CSO)

• « Histoire des mondes contemporains, XXe-XXIe siècles : modernité, modernisation et conflits » (2nd year, Reims campus, 72 hTD)

• Center for History and Economics in Paris grant, 2025
• François Bourdon History Prize, ‘young researchers’ category, 2024
• Joseph Poux Arts and Sciences Prize, 2024
• Ithaque-Marquet Prize for an economic history dissertation, 2023
• RUCHE and AFHE grant, 2022

• C’est Formica, c’est formidable ! Une histoire d’entreprise (1951-1983), Paris, Ithaka, 2024 
• « Le Formica, une histoire d’amour toxique », Terrestres [online], avril 2025.