My office, 2026
Sociologist at Inria · Paris, France
I am interested in automation as a process, from its production to its enactment and its consequences. I am a researcher at Inria and an associate researcher at the Sciences Po médialab.
Big Data & Society
This article examines the idea of a separation between free software, open source and the high-tech industry, and proposes a framework for analysing the almost consubstantial ties that bind them.
With Donato Ricci · Preprint
We show that LLMs do not apply to work transparently but require work of their own to function, which we call configuration work, and we examine four of its consequences.
Sociologie, 16(3), 227–250
I use traces of computing activity to show the continuities between unpaid and paid work in free software.
Sociologie du travail, 62(3)
I trace how free software entered the Silicon Valley industry from the 1980s onwards and introduce the concept of public industrial goods to think about its role in software production.
With Donato Ricci · AOC, op-ed (in French)
Against dramatic accounts of large language models, we argue for an analysis grounded in their ordinary uses.
Radio · Les Chantiers de la recherche (in French)
Podcast · Interview with Lise Barcellini (in French)
This section presents the main inquiries I have conducted or am conducting, with some of their materials and the publications that came out of them.
Since 2025
Public debate focuses on the AI giants. Yet much of the production runs through so-called “open” AI, which people can run on their own servers or computers. Starting from Hugging Face, this inquiry studies how these models are made and circulated, and what unequal access to computing changes.
With Nicolas Berkouk, a mathematician, and Anna Charles, a machine learning engineer, in collaboration with LINC, the CNIL’s digital innovation lab.
Ex machina. The making of open-source LLMs
With Nicolas Berkouk and Anna Charles · LINC, CNIL (in French)
With Nicolas Berkouk and Anna Charles · LINC, CNIL (in French)
Since 2024
EL2MP studies how language models enter work practices through a collective, participatory inquiry. Workshops, exercises and notebooks document what people delegate, check and reorganize with these tools.
At the Sciences Po médialab, with the designers Donato Ricci and Tommaso Prinetti.
EL2MP. Ecologies of LLM Practices
Project website ↗With Donato Ricci · AOC (in French)
Radio · Les Chantiers de la recherche (in French)
Podcast · Interview with Lise Barcellini (in French)
With Donato Ricci · Preprint
With Donato Ricci, Tommaso Prinetti and Zoé de Vries · Book, Éditions Annexes
2016–2022
Git is the software most developers now use to write code together: it keeps track of every change, who made it and when. Following how Git is made and used, this inquiry analyses how the collective writing of code, the control of work and the relations between free software and the software industry are organized.
PhD at EHESS (Centre Maurice Halbwachs), supervised by Emmanuel Didier, a sociologist, and Christophe Prieur, a computer scientist and sociologist.
Git. The industrialization of software writing
Read the dissertation ↗PhD dissertation in sociology, EHESS
With Antoine Larribeau · RESET, edited special issue, bilingual
Sociologie du travail, 62(3) · Young Author Prize
My current interests include:
If you would like to work with me on these topics, in sociology and anthropology but also in interdisciplinary collaborations, I invite you to contact me. This can take the form of an internship, a research assistant position, master’s thesis supervision, PhD co-supervision, etc. Funding opportunities depend on current projects.
Write to me:
I am a sociologist at Inria and an associate researcher at the Sciences Po médialab. I investigate automation as a process, from its production to its enactment and its consequences, in fields ranging from free software to artificial intelligence.
Before joining Inria, I was a postdoctoral researcher at Sciences Po and a lecturer at Université Gustave Eiffel. A former student of the École normale supérieure, trained in sociology and statistics (ENS, ENSAE), I completed my PhD at EHESS (2022); my work received the Young Author Prize of the journal Sociologie du travail.