Research news - May / July 2025

A group of scientists, including Allison Guiraud and Lise Renaud from Avignon University (Centre Norbert Elias), has published Unplug!This is a holiday book like no other, aimed at anyone interested in the use of digital technology in museums and heritage sites.

Contrary to the enthusiastic rhetoric about "cultural democratisation through digital technology", this book offers a lucid - and sometimes ironic - reading of the realities on the ground. Based on several years of surveys, first-hand accounts from professionals in the cultural sector and in situ observations, it sheds light on the many difficulties that are often overlooked: injunctions to go digital, technical constraints, cumbersome contracts, problems of maintenance and system evaluation.

👉 To find out more and discover the holiday notebook

The The application procedure is deliberately light A project can be presented in just a few pages. Funding can range from 10 000 € à 400 000 €for periods of between 6 months and 4 years.

The project OTRartled by The Routes of the Olive Treethe Cultural Route of Europe, based in Kalamata, is funded as part of the Europe Creative. It aims to raise awareness of the ecological transition through artistic creation, and brings together six partner countries: France, Greece, Italy, Spain, Croatia and Malta.

The event was organised by CMQe Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur Cultural and Creative Industries and Avignon University, Isabelle Brianso (CNE) with the support of the Culture and Research and Innovation Support departments (DARI). Three round tables were held on the following themes:

• #1 - Cultural data from the field in the Cultural and Creative Industries: co-production between researchers and cultural institutions
• #2 - Cultural and Creative Industries Networks in France and Abroad
• #3 - The "Residence" as a frontier object in the Cultural and Creative Industries (academic and professional worlds)

This scientific day brought together researchers, teacher-researchers, cultural professionals and companies from the cultural sector of the Cultural and Creative Industries around an interdisciplinary programme.

June 2025 - Fabrice Lefèvre

Fabrice Lefèvre is Director of the Avignon Computer Science Laboratory (LIA), Scientific Integrity Advisor and Head of the IA Master's programme.

After a degree in artificial intelligence at UPMC, he specialised in automatic language processing. He began by working on speech recognition and understanding in laboratories such as LIP6 and LIMSI. When he arrived in Avignon, his research expanded to include all the components of human-machine voice interaction systems. He is particularly interested in dialogue management, automatic text generation, interaction with robots, and aspects such as personalisation and multimodal communication.

👉 Discover his portrait

Agnès Maffre-Baugé is a professor of private law at the Legal, Political, Economic and Management Sciences Laboratory (JPEG).
Its research activity focuses mainly on copyright. Over the years, her research has broadened to include cultural goods law and, more broadly, intellectual property and consumer issues arising from the digital transition. As such, she is particularly interested in relationship between ordinary law and contractual copyright or consumer rights.

👉 Discover his portrait

On Friday 23 May, a 6-minute report on the TF1 8.00pm news was devoted to ants, including Crau ants, used by the EECAR-IMBE research team to restore the site after an oil spill.

👉 See it here

Around thirty pupils from the Lycée Jean-Henri Fabre in Carpentras took part in the "Deal de sciences" operation on the Jean-Henri Fabre university campus, at the AgES institute and on the INRAE Saint-Paul site. This event was designed by the Latitudes association in partnership with Avignon University and INRAE.

The class was able to discover three workshops led by researchers on three themes: water, with the team from UMR EMMAHinsects with IMBE and green chemistry with the Green team (UMR SQPOV). In the afternoon, at INRAE Saint-Paul, they had the chance to visit the weather station and then watch a tour of remarkable trees by Michel Valerio. Finally, the board game "STÅL Invasions on biological control.

The 4th edition of the Tersys Implanteus Summer School 4 (TISS4) was held on 2, 3 and 4 July 2025.

The aim of the symposium was to share how multidisciplinarity in research projects can help meet the challenges of agriculture, food, health and sustainability.

👉 See more photos on the Implanteus Linkedin page

The Agorantic research federation held its annual Hors les Murs seminar at the Parc des Libertés in Avignon on 2 and 3 June, an opportunity to exchange and share ideas on interdisciplinary research.

On the programme:

• Research project presentations
• Thesis topics in progress
• Financing instruments
• Open Science
• AI for research

Thank you to all those who helped to make these two days a high point for collaborative thinking and networking!

👉 Upcoming presentations on the Agorantic website

Follow the Agorantic Research Federation's new Linkedin page to keep up to date with the life of the FR.

👉 Go here

The co-chair of the GIF chair was held on Thursday 3 July in Paris, at the offices of the Union Sociale pour l'Habitat (USH).

👉 GIF Chair

The GEOFCAN 2025 conference took place on 4, 5 and 6 June on the Hannah Arendt campus.
This 14th edition is organised by the UMR EMMAH (Mediterranean Environment and Modelling of Agro-Hydrosystems).

The programme covers the assessment of natural and anthropogenic risks, the study of the physico-chemical properties of soils, soil-hydrogeological and agronomic environments and processes, and the use of direct and inverse geophysical models.

👉 For further information

The second steering committee meeting for the GeEAUde Chair will be held on 6 October on the Jean-Henri Fabre campus.

Emma Léone, doctoral student at the IMBE-IUT in Avignon, wins an award at the SEFA 2025 conference

Emma Léonea first-year doctoral student at the EECAR team of the UMR IMBE at the IUT in Avignon, won the prize for the best oral communication at the 2025 conference of the French Society of Fundamental and Applied Ecotoxicology (SEFA), held in La Roche-sur-Yon from 1 to 4 July.

His paper looked at the very long-term effects of soil contamination following the burning of munitions in a protected natural area, the Crau plain in the Bouches-du-Rhône département. Half of her research is supported by the Sud-PACA region via the "Young Doctoral Employment" scheme and the company RSK-France. His work is also the fruit of collaboration between three UMRs, LCE, LPED and IMBE and should lead to the implementation of operations to rehabilitate and ecologically restore polluted sites.
Congratulations again on winning this award for her first oral presentation at a conference!

Friday 11th July : Binomial - Hydrogeology: "Ocean Blue

5pm - Duration 1h10 - Cour minérale - Campus Hannah Arendt

Ocean blue by Alex Lorette, based on his meeting with Konstantinos Chalikakis, Professor of Hydrogeology at Avignon University (UMR EMMAH / GeEAUde Chair), who studies the impact of freshwater sources on coastal environments and therefore the freshwater/saltwater balance.

Zoé, a teenager, suffers from inexplicable loss of balance and repeated falls. Perhaps Zoé is not the crux of the problem. Perhaps she is expressing, through her body language, a concern that her words are struggling to express...

👉 Free, book here

Avignon - Cloître Saint Louis 
Organised by the Festival d'Avignon and the ANR

👉 Detailed programme

• 7 and 8 July : Performing arts, Digital stages
• 13 and 14 July Transmission Impossible
• 16 July Meeting of the A+U+C and TRAS networks
• 17 and 18 July Archives and directories, restitution and transmission
  
  👉 More info
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The Fête de la Science 2025 will take place from 3 to 13 October 2025.
The Vaucluse programme will be broadcast in September.

👉 Information on the national Fête de la Science