Bérénice GIRARD

Bérénice Girard is a researcher with the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD). Her research sits at the crossroad of environmental sociology, sociology of the State and South Asian Studies. Her work has focused on the management of the Ganges River, on energy changes in urban and urbanizing localities of Northern India and on the transition to solar energy in India.

Bérénice Girard defended her PhD in sociology in July 2019 at EHESS Paris (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales — School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences). Her thesis, entitled “The Engineers, the River and the State. The role and place of engineers in the management of the Ganges”, was awarded the French Academic Network on Asian Studies (GIS Asie) 2020 PhD Award. She has held postdoctoral fellowships at the Laboratoire Techniques, Territoires et Sociétés (Gustave Eiffel University, 2018-2020), at the Centre de Sciences Humaines (2021) and at the University of Stavanger in Norway (2021-2023). She was also awarded a Landhaus fellowship at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society (LMU Munich, 2022).