The difficulties encountered by the French government in setting up the accompanying measures for the reconversion of Fessenheim nuclear power plant following its closure bear witness of our blatant lack of knowledge of the interaction between nuclear power plants and space, thus preventing their serene reconversion. While previous research has mainly looked into the spatialities of nuclear power through the lens of risk, geographers’ works overshadowed the diversity of the territorialities created by this industry infused with particular socioeconomic characteristics. According to the IAEA’s Power Reactor Information System, there were 47 commercial nuclear power plants permanently closed in 14 different countries in early March 2020, with more to come in France, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, South Korea, the United States and Belgium. Thus, improving our understanding of nuclear geography constitutes a crucial stake of future energy transitions. Additionally, if energy geographers identified path-dependencies as a crucial element inhibiting energy transitions, transition studies lack the theoretical concept to evaluate the spatial consistency of these dynamics which facilitate the perpetuation of incumbent energy systems. While being focused on hydrocarbons’ energy systems, previous research on spatial path-dependencies has widely disregarded nuclear power. To treat these thematic and conceptual locks to energy transitions, NucTerritory propose to mobilize Raffestin’s relational territorialities in order to evaluate the spatial-embeddedness of nuclear power plants. Drawing on Debarbieux and Raffestin, we define “nuclear territories” as the outcomes of relational territorialities processes, considering that “space becomes territory when it emerges out of social interactions” (Raffestin, 1986). To identify nuclear territorialities, understood as sets of relationships linking social groups with the material environment mediated by representations, NucTerritory will apply Aldhuys’ three-step method built on Di Méo’s conception of multidimentional territorialities. NucTerritory offers to characterize the production process of territorialities by implementing the tools for a comparative cross-analysis. Through the comparison of four nuclear power plants situated in different spatial contexts and at different stages of their operation lives, the project will identify the variables responsible for differences between territorialities. Case studies will be implemented in two nuclear power plants in the United Kingdom (Wylfa and Heysham) and two others in the United States’ east coast (Vermont Yankee and Seabrook). Comparison will be ensured using a framework translating Aldhuy’s methods into eight indicators that will be researched through different sources (semi-structured interviews, newspapers' archives, legal text databases, economic and demographic databases) analyzed using mix-methods including discourse and content analysis.

The project SOCIOMA aims to write a history of sociological knowledges in Latin Europe of the 12th-15th centuries. This research will distinguish itself from other social history studies by focusing on the study of classificatory thoughts, in order to show that these are not only descriptive, but that they are performative intellectual tools, a repertory of social forms available to the actors, a "technology of power". Adopting a comparative (transnational) and multidisciplinary approach, this project intends to mobilize the analytical tools of sociology and social anthropology, applied to the study of unpublished medieval documentary material held in European libraries. Three axes guide this research program: a lexicographical survey devoted to the vocabulary of social categories; the study and editing of theological, legal, philosophical and medical scholarly texts that convey a discourse on the architectonics of medieval society; and the observation of the use of social taxonomies in the literature of praxis, in order to better reveal the social dynamics that result from them. This project is therefore part of the most recent historiography, observing the new 'governmental rationalities' that developed from the 12th century onwards, under the combined effect of the Gregorian Reformation, the emergence of modern States, and the rediscovery of the sciences of politics. Ambitious in its aspiration to give an account of very current principles of general sociology, it intends to participate in contemporary reflection on the methodology of socio-professional classifications and their political and administrative consequences.

The project FermeGé aims to study the impact of a discriminatory but rational tax- organization (1664-1794) on modern French territories and societies. It identifies the functional dynamics of an institution rooted in a culture of privilege, and hence Inequality, but just as much in an enlightened administrative culture which pursued efficiency. A veritable “State within a State”, endowed with formidable means of coercion but also power to conduct transactions, the royal general tax farms locally strengthened or weakened the sense of injustice at the interface with the plural societies on which it operated. The tension between a managerial logic informed by a forward-looking administrative science and law on the one hand, and geographical and social Identities on the other hand, produced a range of reactions which took the form of multi-semantic practices and discourses on inequality, up to and including violent radicalization. The project is based on interdisciplinary collaboration among for laboratories covering History-Geography-History of Law, while acknowledging heuristic advances in each discipline. It aims to provide the scientific community with new insights into this fiscal organization, which is not limited to the paradigm of a purely coercive organization, but above all FermGé will offer analyses of inequality in terms of the interface between Taxes, Territories and Societies. From the modern periode, it is true that Taxation was a tool for reducing inequalities thanks to administrative rationality, a tool which will be also used by the contemporary State. The originality of this project lies further in the questioning of a notional duality “inequality/rationality” based on a model of Inequalities Management (that of the royal Farms) which was exported abroad. We hypothesize that this duality can be applied to the study of any type of organization having global authority in a given territory. The project is organized around 3 work-axes: 1- Dictionary. Its scientific vocation is to update the historiography and to describe and qualify an inequal system. It aims geographic exhaustivity, which is a challenge that the project raises by soliciting specialists from several regions of France and Europe.2 – Atlas. It analyses the physical territorial presence of the general Farms by Provinces, but also by river basin and by Border. It respects the spirit of the project which wishes, beyond the known institutional and judicial data, to establish maps that represent the management of privileges. 3- An exploratory and cross-disciplinary History of the notional duality inequality/rationality. Axis 3 will seek an interchange of perspectives among researchers from different disciplines in order to gain an understanding of how spatial and social inequality was handled during the Age of Enlightenment. An interpretation seminar will be implemented. After these meetings, the first international colloquium on the subject (« Managing Privilege: the royal general Farms in the French and European areas ») is planned in two phases: one will deepen the work of the seminar; the other will extrapolate the management model of the privilege by opening the reflection to other historical tax-organizations. 4- An anchor in the principles of open science. The data and productions will be exposed according to the principles of FAIR data management. The project web site will be articulated to the platforms for linking data.

The Transrisk project is to be considered as the development of the DFG/ANR Transrisk program «Analyse interdisciplinaire et transfrontalière de l’histoire des risques d’inondation dans l’espace du Rhin-Supérieur » (ANR-07-FRAL-025 » which has been successfully concluded in 2011. This strong partnership made it possible to create, for the southern part of the Upper Rhine, a transnational data base of historical floods for the last three hundred years. In addition, it was possible to define et classify the types of floods and the climatic context in which they took place. With case studies on a local scale in both countries, the evolution of the flood risk has been analysed and translated into maps, especially through the part played by land occupation. The results increased our knowledge and afforded a better assessment of historical floods: the conclusions have been presented and discussed with the relevant management services, especially because these services are included in the recommendations of the European Order on flood management. The link between the different stages of this Order till 2015 is a key for the new Transrisk research program. The aims are improving the methods from TRANSRISK with new case - studies and widening of the analysis in space, to enlarge the database of the historical floods from 1700 to nowdays. In the same way, the new land occupations will be studied on a regional scale and, particularly, the transformations of the waterways, which are an important factor of the historical floods. After the promising results of the first Transrisk program, the main focus point of the new Transrisk will be first to study the perception and acceptance of the risks (in particular through communication and information), secondly to analyse vulnerability, the aim of the research being to contribute to a complete and integrated management of the flood risk on both sides of the border. For this Franco-German territory, the project aims to afford a complete and coherent system of understanding of flood risk management by analysing the spatial and temporal differences and evolutions of the risk perception, the political decisions, the technical and land planning choices, the part played by public statements about risks in the current difficult context of global warming. A special attention will be given to transposing the extreme flood events since the XVth century on the existing situation. This thought process aims at evaluating the historically recurrent dramatic event more than the centennial events, which is in complete concordance with the European Order. In order to reach these objectives, the interdisciplinary study must be reinforced and the collaboration with other scientific disciplines which are able to offer new ways of thinking and new tools. But the Transrisk project is also an applied science project: it aims at the development of a territorially-rooted risk culture, through cooperation with the competent administrations and an integration of other actors of risk management on a local scale (History Societies, representatives, schools, enterprises).