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.

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)