Mikaëla Le Meur
Anthropologist and PhD graduate from the Université libre de Bruxelles, I work at the intersection of social and environmental issues related to urban contexts. Between 2011 and 2018, I conducted research on waste, plastic materials, and their recycling sectors in Vietnam. I present this work in my doctoral thesis on the ecological transformations of Vietnamese cities of varying sizes (2019) and in a book entitled Le mythe du recyclage (2021, Éditions Premier Parallèle).
My research focuses on materiality and on the relationships that city dwellers, as well as waste workers, have with objects and plastic materials, as well as the consequences of their treatment on human and environmental health. My work also engages with globalization studies, as I have investigated the international trade of waste and plastics, and worked with internationally oriented actors in the plastics industry.
Since 2019, I have also been conducting research in France, in Marseille, on issues related to water, attachments, risks, and the controversies that emerge around them. My postdoctoral research focuses on a small, highly altered coastal river that is receiving increasing attention from citizen groups and institutional policies. I bring my research in France and Vietnam into dialogue, with the aim of creating symmetrical ethnographies and contributing to urban comparison in anthropology.
Finally, I practice a multimodal anthropology, experimenting with research and writing techniques that combine images and sounds.
