[Portrait] Ondine Le Fur, PhD student in geography at the Espace-Dev laboratory
What is your research about?
Doctoral student in Geography (Avignon University, UMR Espace-Dev; INRAE, UMR RECOVER), my research focuses on forest fire risk prevention in France and Australia. I analyse urban and regional planning regulations that take into account the vulnerability of inhabited areas on the outskirts of cities to forest fires.
In these "habitat-forest interface" zones, I am interested in the use of the landscape to characterise the representations of the vulnerability to fire of the residents in their place of residence. The cultural and subjective adaptation of vulnerable communities is then studied as a determining aspect of the implementation of forest fire risk prevention policy.
What are your current scientific activities?
I regularly present my work at conferences on fire risk management (IFCBR2022, Forest Fire Research 2022, France-Australia Bushfire Science Workshop 2020), as well as in European research programmes such as Interreg Marittimo (France-Italy cooperation on forest fire management). Alongside the State administrations, I take part in working days and exchanges on the practices of the services and the application of public prevention policies. An article is currently being finalised.
Why did you choose to work in academic research?
After 5 years in a departmental administration (DDTM) working on forest fire risk prevention, I decided to do a thesis to study this public policy in detail and to take a step back on the way it is established by comparing it with another system abroad (Australia, State of Victoria). I wanted to find out how research works in order to understand how public authorities interact with researchers and use the products of research to develop their missions.
Also, the study of the landscape in the service of land use planning is a discipline that I had invested in during my agricultural engineering school and that I had left on hold for a while. I therefore aspired to deepen these skills in social sciences applied to risk management in the framework of my research.
What advice would you give to students who want to do research?
I see research as a personal intellectual development experience that is built in a team on a daily basis. The research developed in a benevolent work group allows me to understand the mental load that can sometimes be important in the face of the reflection and production to be provided during a time constrained by the PhD. The choice of people with whom you develop your doctoral project is important to share all the phases of the research process. Pushing your reasoning and sharing your results is all the more exciting when your collaborators have followed your progress closely.
What object or image from your business best illustrates you?
Field day on 13 March 2022 in the Diamond Creek neighbourhood (Greater Melbourne, Australia). Survey of residents on their perceptions of vulnerability to wildfire.
L'UMR Espace-Dev
The central theme of the unit has as its common object of study "the characterisation and preparation of transitions for the sustainability of the integrated society-environment system". It is declined on several themes and methodologies rich of the competences of the unit, and with a scientific approach of "sustainability science".
The portraits
Mis à jour le 22 December 2022