About Laboratory

Geography-Cities, an interdisciplinary laboratory at the crossroads of human geography and urban studies

Located on the Condorcet Campus in Aubervilliers, a site dedicated to research and research training in the humanities and social sciences, Géographie-cités brings together eighty professors, researchers, engineers, and technicians, along with as many doctoral students. Together they conduct research that combines theoretical and epistemological reflection, quantitative and qualitative methods, empirical work, and comparative approaches. Geographie-cités shares data sets, source codes and materials produced by its researchers. The laboratory is involved in numerous scientific programs and partnerships, both in France and internationally.

The Geographie-Cités laboratory is a joint research unit (UMR) that was formed by the merger of several research centers including the Center for Theoretical and Quantitative Geography and the CRIA (both created at the University of Paris I in 1980) and the Center for Geohistory (created in 1969). It has four co-supervisors: the CNRS, the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, the Université Paris Cité, and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. Géographie-cités is also present on the Olympe de Gouge site of the Université Paris Cité and at the Institut de Géographie in Paris.

Géographie-cités is composed of three teams – CRIA, EHGO and PARIS – which develop both their own research and common themes. This research articulates reflexivity, human geography, urban studies, and urban planning.

The PARIS team places spatial and social interactions at the heart of its analyses as driving forces at different scales and temporalities. The fields of study are distributed across time and space scales and on all continents. Actor practices and representations are also mobilized, as well as new data from digital platforms. The research relies on a diverse set of methods ranging from interviews to spatial modeling.

The EHGO team conducts research in epistemology, history of geography and geohistory. By not limiting itself to academic knowledge, it makes the analysis of the production of geographical knowledge in the long term one of the keys to its work. The team is also interested in spatial processes at various scales of time and space.

The CRIA team focuses on transformations in urban production, management, and materiality in a context of the renewal of urban planning and development actors, political and economic mutations and environmental changes. Work is conducted in a variety of cultural areas: Europe, North America, and Northeast Asia.

Exchanges between the three teams are structured around four transversal themes:
• Mobilities and territories: towards a relational approach to space;
• Stability and fluidity of geographical objects;
• Making the city: processes, actors, practices;
• Data and protocols in digital humanities.

Download the presentation of the UMR Géographie-cités

UMR Administration

Géographie-cités – UMR 8504
Director: Éric Denis
Associate Director: Nicolas Verdier
General Secretary: Martine Laborde

CRIA Team
Director: Sabine Barles

EHGO Team
Co-directors: Olivier Orain and Nicolas Verdier

PARIS Team
Co-directors: Sophie Baudet-Michel and Hadrien Commenges

Four transverse subjects structure inter-team research activities

Mobility and Territories: Towards a Relational Approach to Space

Stability and Fluidity of Geographical Objects

Making the City: Processes, Actors, Practices

Data and Protocols in the Digital Humanities

Five working groups exist within the UMR

STOP Harassment

The support and information working group on harassment.

Are you a target or witness of harassment? An internal committee can help support, inform, and assist you with institutional resources.
Visit page. The Stop Harassment committee members may be contacted individually or contact the committee at stopharcelement ( at ) parisgeo.cnrs.fr

Stop Harassment committee members: Sandrine Berroir ; Nadine Cattan ; Luc Guibard ; Saber Marrouchi ; Juliette Maulat ; Camille Schmoll ; Julie Vallée

The mission of the Digital Communication WG is to develop a strong identity for the UMR through the diffusion of homogeneous contents on all digital media.

Members of the working group: Catherine Côme, Eric Denis, Denis Eckert, Anita Lau-Bignon, Joséphine Lecuyer, Julie Vallée

UMR Digital Archives

(including archives of emeritus members)

Created in 2003 by Christine Kosmopoulos, the UMR Geographie-Cités’ open archive collection provides access to nearly 2000 full texts and more than 1400 references, including an exhaustive index of all laboratory production since 2017.
In addition, a policy of promoting the publications and work of its emeritus members, carried out by the UMR’s working group on heritage archives, has led to the creation of several individual open archive collections: François Durand-Dastes, Denise Pumain, Violette Rey, Thérèse Saint-Julien.

UMR Digital Archives Working Group Members: Julie Chouraqui, Christine Kosmopoulos, Olivier Orain

Digital communication

Tracking the UMR’s PhD Students

This working group has several objectives:
1) to identify and build a network of alumni
2) to maintain links in different directions: research, training, exchanges around professional paths
3) to provide visibility on the skills acquired during a PhD program
4) to provide visibility on former PhD students’ professional trajectories

UMR PhD Student Working Group Members: Sandrine Berroir, Joël Boulier, Clarisse Didelon Loiseau, Joséphine Lecuyer, Pierre Pistre, Natacha Rollinde de Beaumont, Christine Zanin

Digital Communication

The Digital Communication working group’s mission is to develop the Laboratory’s presence on digital media.

Digital Communication Working Group: Catherine Côme, Eric Denis, Denis Eckert, Antoine Gosnet, Julie Vallée

IT Management

This group was created in the context of adapting the IT system to the different policies of our cotutelles. Its mission is to analyse the needs of users in terms of business software (eg. Arcgis, Qgis, R) and resources (hardware). Its goal is to develop standards that will allow us to optimize the use of our resources according to technological developments.

IT Management Working Group Members: Ludovic Chalonge, Hadrien Commenges, Thomas Louail, Saber Marouchi, Yonathan Parmentier