Membre

Thesis:
“Think Global, Block Local” – The Role of Digital Social Networks in the Spatial Organization of Environmental Civil Disobedience Movements. [Provisional Title]

Supervised by Camille SCHMOLL (EHESS, Geographie-Cités) and Laurent BEAUGUITTE (CNRS, Geographie-Cités)

The doctoral project aims to analyse the spatiality of contemporary environmental civil disobedience movements, from local forms of occupation and the implementation of “concrete alternatives” (Pailloux, 2016) to their integration into networks of resistance at regional, national and transnational scales. It pays particular attention to how these different scales are articulated, as well as to the role played by digital social networks in processes of connection, coordination, and diffusion.
Situated within the field of the geography of social movements, the research focuses on activists’ practices (objects of mobilisation, repertoires of action, mobilities, meeting places, and forms of organisation) and examines the relationships between the globalisation and territorialisation of struggles. It analyses how activist codes and imaginaries circulating at the transnational level are appropriated and reconfigured locally. In a context of increasing legal repression and policing of environmental mobilisations in the United Kingdom and France, it also investigates the effects of the criminalisation of activism on the spatiality of these movements, particularly in terms of adaptation and recomposition.
To analyse these dynamics, the research adopts a mixed-methods approach combining ethnographic fieldwork and quantitative analysis. It is based on multi-sited fieldwork conducted within three recent movements in France and the United Kingdom: Extinction Rebellion, Les Soulèvements de la Terre, and Just Stop Oil, complemented by participant observation in emblematic sites of environmental struggle such as the A69 highway project and the Triangle de Gonesse. The analysis of biographical, residential, and activist trajectories makes it possible to understand the articulation between individual engagements, collective experiences, and network formation. In parallel, social network analysis is used to identify groups across different scales and to reconstruct their ties of solidarity and coordination using digital data. Combined with field observations, this approach highlights patterns of centrality, power asymmetries, and the concrete trajectories through which ideas and practices circulate within these movements.

Since 2024: PhD in Geography – EHESS.

2020 – 2024: Degree from the École Normale Supérieure of Paris.

2020 – 2023: Master’s Degree in Geography – EHESS. Thesis “The geography of intersectional feminism on Instagram: how minority groups appropriate a space of intimate self-exposure for collective action”, supervised by Cécile Boëx and Nadine Cattan.

2019 – 2020: Bachelor’s Degree in Geography  – Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne. Erasmus program at Utrecht University, Netherlands.

2017 – 2019: Preparatory Course for Grand Ecoles (CPGE A/L), specializing in History and Geography.

2026 – Visiting researcher at the French Research Institute of Oxford, University of Oxford (3 months).

2025–2026 – Lecturer, Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University
Undergraduate teaching in geography.

2022–2026 – Instructor, French preparatory classes (CPGE), Lycée Honoré de Balzac
Teaching and oral examinations in geography.

2023–2024 – Lecturer in French, University of Chicago
Teaching French language and literature courses (undergraduate and graduate levels).

2022–2023 – Tutor for TalENS program, École Normale supérieure of Paris
Teaching support in geography, geopolitics, political science, history, and literature.

TARANNE, Erell. 2025. “Mapping rebellion: the role of digital social networks in the spatial strategies of Extinction Rebellion.” PARIS Seminar, 21 November 2025, Géographie-cités Research Unit, Aubervilliers, France.

BUI LEDOUX, Edouard and TARANNE, Erell. 2025. Organization of the study day “Sensitive Fieldwork” as part of the cross-cutting research axis “Reflexivity in Research Practice,” Géographie-cités Research Unit. 10 April 2025, Aubervilliers, France.

2023 – Participation in the Masterclass “Emerging Africa: Mobile Cities, Digital Lives?”, a collective fieldwork project on digital platforms and urban mobility in Cape Town, co-supervised by the University of Cape Town and École normale supérieure (ENS).

2026 – Recipient of the International Mobility Grant, EHESS Doctoral School (ED 286).

2025 – Recipient of the French research institutes abroad program mobility grant of EHESS, awarded for a visiting research stay at the Maison Française d’Oxford, University of Oxford.