Interface axis

The Interfaces axis is supervised by Aurélie Binot, science-society advisor at CIRAD and member of the ExposUM Executive Committee.

Tiphaine Lefebvre, Project Assistant for the Exposum interface pillar, was recruited by the DPS and has been based at MSH SUD since September 2023.

Mariline Poupaud, Scientific Support Officer, was recruited by the DPS and has been based at MSH SUD since January 2024.

Finally, to support the team in its tasks of assisting and coordinating the cohort of ExposUM project leaders, Alexandre Guichardaz, a consultant in consultation engineering, works with the team for 20% of his working time. Gilles Sarter, an independent sociologist, supports the team with sociological studies.

* Aurélie Binot, welcomed at MSH SUD as deputy director, is responsible for coordinating Axis 2 "Science-Society Interfaces" at the ExposUM Institute and is a member of the ExposUM Executive Committee; she has been appointed to these roles in her capacity as a CIRAD researcher recognized in this field. Within the framework of this Axis 2, the UM can draw on the action research facilities of MSH SUD and its staff, enabling this UAR to carry out actions on behalf of the ExposUM Institute.

The Interfaces axis supports teams working on projects funded by ExposUM in order to promote interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary processes within projects, if deemed relevant by the project leaders, and to encourage collaboration between project teams. This support is offered to all winning teams that wish to participate. In 2023, this represents 14 potential teams (7 research projects, 5 doctoral nexuses, 2 fellowships), to which will be added the winning teams from subsequent years.

Learn more about community engagement...

Various workshops and meetings are offered on different topics:

• Theme 1: Building community
• Theme 2: Sharing methodologies and research approaches Global Health/One Health/Health and the Environment
• Theme 3: Developing skills in interdisciplinary practice
• Theme 4: Working on the science-decision-society link within projects

Report on the science-decision workshop for joint project development held in March 2024. – PDF 5 MB

Various animation formats are available:

Call for Expressions of Interest – 2026 sessions

To promote transdisciplinary projects with a regional impact and networking between researchers and civil society actors, the ExposUM institute is offering a new support mechanism for research teams from the I-Site community and their associative partners, to highlight their research on topics related to the exposome, environmental health, or global health around regional issues at the interface between science and society.

Events must include at least onecommunication activity(conference, event, film or documentary screening) to promote the initiative at the interface between science and society andsharetransdisciplinaryexperiencesacross the I-SITE.

This call for expressions of interest, entitled "Science/Society Interactions," supports action research initiatives that strengthen collaborations between I-SITE members and civil society (local authorities, associations and cooperatives, citizen groups, government agencies such as the ARS, etc.). This support is intended to assist and promote transdisciplinary research-action initiatives in the design phase (funding for exploratory actions to enable a future research-action project), in progress (funding for internships, surveys, dissemination events) or completed (promotion of the initiative).

Supported events will include at least one communication initiative to promote the transdisciplinary initiative and share experiences on the drivers and barriers to transdisciplinarity at the I-SITE level.

After clicking on the link, click on the drop-down banner "Call for Expressions of Interest – 2026 Campaign 'Science-Society Interactions'."

The overall objective of the ongoing seminar is to encourage the emergence of new research topics at the interface between health and the environment, by providing tools for thinking about interdisciplinarity and reflecting on the links between research and society. Through monthly sessions involving researchers from different backgrounds, the aim is to bring together a research community around the concept of the exposome and health and environmental issues, and to encourage reflection on the conduct of interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity.

The presentations scheduled for this seminar will contribute to the participants' reflections in three main areas:

1. Theconcept of the environment: these sessions will examine in particular the contrast between a "pathogenetic" view of the environment as a reservoir of pathogens and a "salutogenic" view, in which the environment is understood in terms of socio-ecological functions that regulate the emergence of pathogens.
2. Thelimits of integration: these sessions will examine the proposed methods for interdisciplinarity that integrate biological, social, and environmental factors, as well as ways of dealing with different epistemological and methodological frameworks.
3. Interaction between research, policy, and social actors: these sessions will explore the potential impacts of exposome research on civil society actors and the possibilities for incorporating their requests and proposals into a process of mutual translation between non-academic and academic actors.

Upcoming sessions of the permanent seminar

If you would like to be notified of upcoming sessions of the ongoing seminar, please send an email toMariline PoupaudorTiphaine Lefebvreto be added to ourmailing list.

Past sessions of the permanent seminar

Previous sessions have been filmed and areavailable on this page.

Link with the Montpellier Metropolitan Area

The Interfaces team participates in the "health ecology" working group of the Montpellier Observatory for Ecology and Health Evolution, initiated by the Montpellier metropolitan area and city. This working group also brings together numerous research institutes, a hospital center, and public operators. The Interfaces team is particularly involved in working group No. 3 on monitoring and evaluating the impacts (using the impact pathways methodology) of new forms of governance and collaboration between scientists and the public sector on health and environment issues.

Link to PRSE4

The Interfaces division works closely with the managers of Occitanie'sRegional Health and Environment Plan 4(led by the Occitanie Regional Health Agency (ARS) and the Regional Directorate for Environment, Planning, and Housing (DREAL)) to ensure synergy between our actions.

In addition, the ExposUM institute participates in meetings organized by the One Health regional network led by the Occitanie Regional Health Agency and the Occitanie Regional Biodiversity Agency.

2026

In 2026, the ExposUM institute will be a partner of the One Health regional school, which will be held in Liège in June 2026, organized by the University of Liège.

2025

The ExposUM Institute, in collaboration with the Center for Land Policy, organized the fifth edition of the experimental educational program Campus Anthropocène/Spring School"Healthy Territories"in from March 31 to April 4, 2025.

Around 60 researchers and representatives of civil society (elected officials, technical agents, students, associations, artists) worked together in the Montpellier area to examine the habitability of territories. How can we live healthily in this area, given the challenges of territorial expansion and environmental preservation in the context of climate change and pressure on local resources (water, air, soil)?

As part of this school, we focused on the question: how can we live healthily in the Anthropocene in the Montpellier area?

And more specifically, to focus on issues related to:

• water and rivers(water resources, water quality), 
• nature-based solutions to climate change and associated vector risks(greening to combat urban heat islands, tiger mosquitoes, and infectious diseases, etc.)
• relationships between humans and non-humans(wild animals and invasive alien species and associated health risks) within a One Health framework.

Click here to discover this school-territory

Support for two regional initiatives for the year 2024

Mobi’Tiques action research project on the prevention of tick-borne diseases

ExposUM supports the Mobitique project. The Interfaces team prepared, hosted, and facilitated five three-hour workshops bringing together researchers in tick ecology (Vectopôle Sud), researchers in the humanities and social sciences (education sciences, social psychology), representatives from the ARS (vector control), associations (CTIQUE, Graine Occitanie), and a representative of livestock farmers (director of the Occitanie Health Protection Group). This pilot project is being developed in line with the ambitions of Occitanie's Regional Health and Environment Plan 4.

This incubation led to an action plan for 2025, supported by the environmental education association Le Graine. This project proposes to develop and implement educational initiatives aimed at strengthening citizens' involvement in issues related to the risk of ticks in their local area, as well as testing one or more scientific research questions in the field of sociology. The aim is to encourage greater citizen engagement, while scientifically measuring and evaluating the impact of public awareness on behavioral changes through a dedicated research protocol.

The initiative around citizen institutes for pollution awareness: support for the Aude institute

The Eco-Citizen Institute for Pollution Monitoring in Aude received support from ExposUM in 2024. This institute was inspired by the Eco-Citizen Institute for Pollution Awareness in Fos-sur-Mer, which since the 2010s has brought together academics and local residents who work together to develop research addressing questions about the long-term consequences of rapid industrialization that began in the late 1960s and has been regularly revived. These institutes promote the hybridization of knowledge, particularly in the field of environmental health, and constitute territorial experiments likely to encourage the implementation of preventive measures in environmental health, within the framework of a transformation of territorial dynamics.

Social science training courses have been offered to volunteers in the Aude department. The courses areavailable online.

A festival was organized in November 2024 to give the residents of Aude a fun introduction to the crucial issues surrounding environmental health in the region. The festival brought together experts, activists, scientists, and artists to offer a rich and informative experience.

Support for two regional initiatives for the year 2025

Two projects have received support from ExposUM for the year 2025.

The Rivière project, "Infectious Risks in Cities: Health Ecology Applied to Interactions between Nutria and Humans," studies human-nutria interactions in the Lez River basin and focuses on the health risks associated with leptospirosis, a zoonotic disease transmitted by these rodents. The project develops an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approach to assess these risks.

The Vaxinter projectexamines how to combine disciplines to address issues raised by vaccination at the interface between science and society. This project involves two researchers in the humanities and social sciences in order to initiate a dialogue between biomedical sciences and the humanities and social sciences. A study will be conducted in experimental economics to explore the impact of media coverage and vaccination among healthcare workers. Work will be carried out in communication sciences to strengthen the links between science and citizens.

The Interfaces team participates in and organizes public events such as science festivals, nature festivals, and outreach festivals.