
Thomas LOUAIL
Position
CNRS researcher
Team
PARIS
E-mail
thomas.louail ( at ) cnrs.fr
Research areas
computational social science
geographic data science
Main research themes
– digital culture and consumption
– music streaming practices
– integration of digital traces into mixed methods research designs
Address
Campus Condorcet
5 cours des Humanités
93322 Aubervilliers cedex
South research building
Office 1.152 (1st floor)
Phone number
+33 (0)1 88 12 01 27
About me
My research lies at the intersection of several disciplines, blending computer science, computational social science and complex systems. I currently work on content consumption dynamics on internet platforms, by combining digital traces of individual activity with survey and interview data. I currently lead several collaborative projects on this topic (see below), including RECORDS (2020-2024), a partnership between several CNRS social science units, Sciences Po Paris and the streaming platform Deezer. We investigate the social and spatial diversity of listening habits and tastes, the worldwide circulation of new music, and the relationship between the music preferences people declared in surveys and their everyday streaming habits.
Publications
Research projects and grants
National projects
2024-27 : MELODYNAMICS (Spatial dyanmics of music discovery and propagation of novelties), funding by the CNRS initiative for interdisciplinary research (MITI), co-PI with Marc Barthelemy
2024-26 : DROM’n BASS (DROM, music streams database and spatial statistics), funding by the French Ministry of Culture, co-PI with Marion Maisonobe
2020-2025 : RECORDS (Users’ practices on music streaming platforms), funding by the French National research agency (ANR), project leader and PI at CNRS/Géographie-cités. See records.huma-num.fr
2021-2024 : MAMA “du Monde d’Avant au Monde d’Après” – Cultural and digital practices, funding by CNRS InSHS , co-PI with Philippe Coulangeon (CRIS), in partnership with the ELIPSS panel
International projects
2018-2022 : MOREHOUSE – Modeling hOusing maRkets dynamics thanks to Emerging and HeterOgeneoUs data SourcEs (funding by CSIC and CNRS), co-PI with Jose Javier Ramasco (IFISC)
Supervision of master’s and doctoral students, and postdoctoral fellows
Current PhD students
– Pierre Gallinari Safar (since 2024), co-advised with Camille Roth (CAMS)
– Kristina Matrosova (since 2020) ‘Spatial dynamics of musical taste’, co-advised with Olivier Bodini (Laboratoire d’Informatique de Paris Nord) and Manuel Moussallam (Deezer research), PhD defense scheduled in December 2024
– Célestin Zimmerlin (since 2024), co-advised with Marc Barthelemy (IPhT)
Previously
Postdocs
– Anne-Cécile Ott (2023-24)
– Timothée Chabot (2023), now Associate professor in sociology at University Toulouse-Jean Jaurès
– Robin Cura (2020-22), now Associate professor in geography at University Panthéon-Sorbonne
PhD students
– Ryma Hachi (2017-2020) “Exploring the effect of street networks’ morphology on their accessibility conditions : an empirical approach based on graph theory“, co-advised with Lena Sanders (CNRS) and Sandrine Robert (EHESS). PhD manuscript available here.
Master students
– Alvin Opler (2022-23), now PhD student at CEA
– Myriam Boualami (2020-21), now PhD student at Centre Marc Bloch (Berlin, DE)
– Quentin Hirtzlin (2021)