Team

Sandra Laugier is Principal Investigator of the European Research Council Advanced Grant project DEMOSERIES. She is Professor of Philosophy at the Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, and Deputy Director of the Institut des Sciences Juridique et Philosophique de la Sorbonne (UMR 8103, CNRS Paris 1).

She has extensively published on ordinary language philosophy (Wittgenstein, Austin, Cavell); moral philosophy (moral perfectionism, ethics of care); democracy and civil disobedience. Her recent work focuses on popular culture, film, TV series and on gender studies. She is the translator of most of Stanley Cavell’s work in French and is an advisor for the publication of Cavell’s Nachlass. She has been Visiting Professor at the School of Criticism and Theory, Cornell University (2023), the University of Toronto (2022), La Sapienza Roma (2019), Boston University (2019, 2021), Pontifical University Lima (2017); Visiting Researcher at the Max Planck Institute Berlin (2014, 2015); Distinguished Visiting Professor at The Johns Hopkins University (2011); Facultés Saint-Louis, Bruxelles (2009); The Johns Hopkins University (2008, 2009). Some of her awards include: Senior Fellow of Institut Universitaire de France (2012-2023), Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur, (2014), Grand prix de Philosophie de l'Académie française (2022).

Among her recent publications: Why We Need Ordinary Language Philosophy (The University of Chicago Press, 2013), Recommencer la philosophie, Stanley Cavell et la philosophie américaine (Vrin, 2014), Nos vies en séries. Ethique et philosophie d’une culture populaire (Flammarion Climats, 2019), Politics of the Ordinary. Care, Ethics, Forms of Life (Peeters, Leuven, 2020), Must We Mean What We Say? at 50 (ed. with Greg Chase & Juliet Floyd, Cambridge University Press, 2022), Les Séries. Laboratoire d’éveil politique (CNRS Editions, 2023), Television with Stanley Cavell in Mind (ed. with David LaRocca), TV-Philosophy in Action. The Ethics and Politics of TV Series and TV-Philosophy. How TV Series Change our Thinking (all published at University of Exeter Press, 2023). Wittgenstein. Senses of Use (The University of Chicago Press, forthcoming).

She was a columnist for the French journal Libération (2013-2023) and frequently writes op-eds for other magazines. She is also the Principal Investigator of the CNRS prematuration program RECO+ on TV series recommendation systems.

(Photo Astrid di Crollalanza © Flammarion)

Anastasia Krutikova is a Post Doctoral fellow and a Project Coordinator of Demoseries. She obtained her Ph.D. in Sociocultural Anthropology from the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS) in 2023.

Her research activities fall into two main areas. The first lies at the intersection of sociocultural anthropology, the anthropology of ideas and the anthropology of education (with a particular focus on contemporary secondary geography teaching in France and Russia). The second area focuses on popular culture and television series in a globalised context.

In Demoseries, in collaboration with Tatsiana Zhurauliova, she develops a research programme on spy TV series in Eastern European countries. You can find out more about her work here.

Sylvie Allouche was a Post Doctoral fellow within the Demoseries project between 2020 and 2023. She holds a PhD in Philosophy and develops her research along two complementary directions: 1. the philosophical issues raised by techno-scientific progress (transhumanism, geo- and bio-engineering, robotics and AI, bioart, etc.); 2. the relationship between philosophy and fiction, science fiction and TV series in particular. Since 2014, she has been a part-time associate professor at Lyon Catholic University (UR CONFLUENCE Sciences et Humanités EA 1598).

Her involvement in Demoseries since 2020 has resulted in several scientific articles, around thirty scientific oral contributions, and the edition of two volumes for the Philoséries collection at Vrin: 24 heures chrono, naissance du genre sécuritaire ? (2022) and Sécurité et politique dans les séries de superhéros (2023). She has coordinated various events like the focus “Africa in security series” (2020), the CNRS Thematic School “Moral and social issues in television series” (2022), and the DEMOSERIES research seminar for two years (2022-2023 and 2023-2024).

She has also contributed to the setting up of several other endeavours with various partners, like the “Spies in the Cinema” festival (2022), the study day “Thinking the ecosystem and circulation of Israeli series” (2023) and the RECO+ project “Smart Series Recommendation Tool” (CNRS Prematuration program 2023-2024).

Thibaut de Saint Maurice is a PhD Researcher within Demoseries, and taught philosophy for fifteen years in different high schools in France.

His work focuses more particularly on the uses of seriality, as well as the moral and political issues of TV Series. He is also taking a sociological approach to understanding the reception of TV series. Between 2010 and 2013, he has directed the "Culture Pop" collection published by Ellipses. Since 2011, he has been questioning fiction and everyday life in various columns on France Inter.

In 2018, his interest in serial content and democratic expressivity led him to found the Paris Podcast Festival: the first French festival entirely dedicated to native podcasts.

Tatsiana Zhurauliova is a Post Doctoral fellow within the Demoseries project. She is an art historian, whose work focuses on the intersection of visual culture and discourses on identity and difference in the United States and in Eastern Europe.

She received her PhD from Yale University in 2014. Before arriving to Paris, she held the position of a Collegiate Assistant Professor and a Harper and Schmidt Fellow in the Society of Fellows at the University of Chicago.

Within the Demoseries project, she manages a collaborative project with Bibliotheque Kandinsky on "Aesthetics of Secrecy" and develops a research programme on security TV series in Eastern Europe, in collaboration with Anastasia Krutikova.

Camille Braune is Research Assistant in Demoseries and a PhD Candidate in Philosophy at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. Her doctoral dissertation is titled: "For a New Ethics of Attention to Language: From the Work of the British Novelist and Philosopher Iris Murdoch (1919-1999)." It aims to explore the influence of Iris Murdoch on the flourishing of contemporary ordinary ethics, and intends to propound a new ethics of attention to language as a singular moral project.

As an Alliance PhD Mobility Recipient for 2023-2024 she was a Visiting Doctoral Student at Columbia University in the City of New York, where she joined the Teachers College Philosophy and Education Program for Spring 2024. In addition to her doctoral dissertation, she has worked for French publishing houses, ‘Esprit’ magazine and ‘CNRS Éditions’, and is still carrying on managing editorial projects.

As part of Demoseries, Camille is involved in editing the research group's books and articles, organising events, conferences and seminars, and managing the website.

Quentin Gervasoni is a Post Doctoral fellow within the Demoseries project, and he defended his doctoral thesis in January 2024. He worked under the supervision of Vincent Berry and Pascale Garnier in the EXPERICE laboratory at the University of Sorbonne Paris Nord (formerly Paris 13) and the LabEx Industries Culturelles et Création Artistique (ICCA).

His doctoral thesis is entitled "From Pokémania to Pokémaniacs. Capturing adult Pokémon fans through cultural and media industry strategies and participatory intermediation". It focuses on the relationship between media audiences and cultural industries and the role of online ecosystems in maintaining attachment to cultural products. He has particularly focused on analysing the emotional regimes of online cultural consumption, and especially 'hype'.

At Demoseries, he is in charge of analysing the online reception of security series using quantitative tools. He hopes to continue his analyses of the emotional regimes of consumption by looking at what they tell us about the issues of moral education at the heart of the research project.

Postdoctoral Research Fellow (2020-2022)

Clément Combes was a Post Doctoral fellow within the Demoseries project between 2022 and 2023. He is now a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Paris 3 - Sorbonne Nouvelle.

His research lies at the intersection of the sociologies of culture and media, in the areas of TV series, cultural practices, music or, more recently, podcasts. He is particularly keen to question how these diverse areas are affected by digital technology. In order to do this, he uses qualitative and quantitative methods.

Within Demoseries, he conducted a research into the reception of TV series, especially security TV series, by the French public, through a questionnaire survey of a representative panel of French people.

Postdoctoral Research Fellow (2020-2021)

Research Assistant (2021-2022)