Methodological Workshop
The Methodological Workshop: A Pillar of Lab’Urba’s Collective Life
The methodological workshop is one of the three transversal seminars of Lab’Urba. Held annually, it aims to provide a space for collective reflection and experience-sharing on methodological aspects related to our research work, making it a highlight of the laboratory’s collective life.
3rd Edition: Science and Society – What Kind of Methodological Tinkering? — 4 April 2025
The third edition of Lab’Urba’s methodological workshop is dedicated to participatory research and action research methods. These approaches are a strong hallmark of the laboratory and raise several important challenges for research practice. Building on previous editions, this workshop will focus on examining the methodological tinkering undertaken within research projects carried out in collaboration with actors outside the academic sphere.
Contributions:
Emmanuelle Faure (UPEC) — “Working on and with a city over the long term: methodological choices and researcher’s stance. Example of the Care and Living Environment action research project in the suburbs of Gennevilliers (92)”
Mariia Bakhabera (UGE) — “Action through creation: practical and conceptual stakes of research-creation”
Ana Cristina Torres (UGE) — “Co-constructing knowledge: the practical and epistemic autonomy of gardeners in Seine-Saint-Denis facing soil contamination”
Nadia Arab (EUP, UPEC) — “The experience of action research: lessons for research?”
Mazarine Girardin (UPEC, UPN) — “Between urban agri-food policies and rural spaces: the relationship to the fieldwork in a CIFRE thesis at the City of Paris”
2nd Edition: The Role of Documents in Our Methodologies — 15 March 2024
This second edition of the methodological workshop focuses on the role of documents in our research documentary (Pédauque, 2003). Information and Communication Sciences consider the document as one of their core objects of study (Couzinet, 2006). Any object can become a document - either by intention, when someone deliberately inscribes it with information the wish to communicate, or by reception, when someone uses it to communicate information (Meyriat, 1981; Gardies, 2012).
Documents have a material dimension and are central in Social Sciences and Humanities research. They intervene mainly at two stages: upstream as sources of inquiry, and downstream when the document itself becomes an object of analysis. At this latter stage, documents are constructed and produced by actors other than the researcher, such as planners, maps, reports, communication or strategic documents produced by associations or collectives involved in our respective research projects, raising important and diverse methodological issues. This session proposes to explore how documents are mobilised and processed in our various research works.
Contributions:
Anthony Ximenez — “Treating professional productions as a contemporary archive of urban planning knowledge: a proposal based on Foucault’s Archaeology of Knowledge”
Juliette Morel (UPEC) — “Towards more inclusive, critical, and qualitative geographic information systems: the problem of geodigitisation and data integration from diverse documents”
Adrien Duval (UGE) — “Guest lists, invitation cards, and seating plans in programming the Maine-Montparnasse operation: writing the history of urban projects from event documentation”
Jennifer Buyck (UGE) — “Between archival analysis and research-creation: the film in question”
1st Edition: Methodological Tinkering — 17 March 2023
The first edition focused on the theme of methodological tinkering, which pervades our research practices. Figuratively, bricolage refers to “intellectual work with an improvised method, shaped by circumstances” (Le Robert dictionary). It represents the complex and informal dimension of the researcher’s work (Meunier et al., 2013) who must “make do with what is at hand” (Levi-Strauss, 1960), assembling diverse but accessible tools and materials to build their methodological framework. Two aspects to our reflections : firstly, improvisation, which implies the need for methodological adaptation; and second, the circumstances that give rise to and constrain that improvisation.
Contributions:
Adrien Duval (UGE) — “Challenges of archival bricolage at the beginning of PhD research: filtering, preserving, and comparing”
Alexia Gignon (UGE) — “Starting a CIFRE thesis during the health crisis: how to find your place with stakeholders?”
Amandine Mille-Raoulx (ESPI-Lab’Urba) — “Accessing the field in CIFRE: can one really see and say everything?”
Julien Aldhuy (UPEC), Hélène Dang Vu (UGE), Guillaume Lacroix (EUP-Lab’Urba) — “Research bricolages: should we tell ourselves stories?”