A selection of symposia organized or participated in by invitation.
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Planification Écologique: Reality and Aspiration
19 March 2026, Paris, France
Ecological planning has taken root in French policy circles, with the “greening” of state budgets and billions of euros for low-carbon retrofits. Meanwhile, Mexico legislates public grid expansion, South Korea directs electric vehicle production, Denmark pioneers offshore wind development, and China barrels ahead with state-backed venture capital, positioning itself as a global provider of green technologies. Together, an emerging cohort of countries is rewriting the playbook for rapid decarbonization. The central message: transitions to low-carbon economies will require a strong state.
For France, ecological planning is now central to the state’s agenda, yet remains conceptually thin and institutionally underspecified. This ambiguity is striking for a country whose postwar experience continues to serve as a global reference point for planning. Today, clarifying the mechanisms that drive ecological planning — both in reality and in aspiration — is essential.
This workshop is organized in affiliation with Sciences Po's Laboratoire interdisciplinaire d’évaluation des politiques publiques (LIEPP) and the International Network for Democratic Economic Planning (INDEP), with support from the France's Agence de la Transition Écologique (ADEME). Participants include Éric Monnet, Clara Leonard, Antoine Jourdan, Hannah Bensussan, Hugo Pompougnac, and Alex Amiotte Suchet.
The Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations in the French late capitalist political economy
12 March 2026, Paris, France
The Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations (CDC) is the oldest and largest public financial institution in France. A major tool of public policy, it has shaped housing and urban policies for decades and has revived industries across the country. Working closely with European bodies, like the European Investment Bank and the European Investment Fund, it has also become a pillar of industrial policy and claims to be a major actor in the ecological transition through green bond issuance and biodiversity banking. And yet, we know little about what drives these changes in mandate or the implementation of specific projects. This workshop brings together experts to locate the CDC in French political economy and reveal its inner workings. It is organized in affiliation with Sciences Po's Centre d'études européennes et de politique comparée. Participants include Matthias Thiemann, Antoine Guironnet, Ulrike Lepont, Cyril Benoît, Patrick Le Galès, Elsa Massoc, and Pierre Alayrac.
Wisconsin School of Economic Sociology (WSES) 2025 Meeting
18-19 April 2025, Madison, WI, USA
In its prime, economic sociology was premised on the moral and communal contours of economic life, with research centered on micro-level questions of embeddedness, relational work, and performativity. But in recent years, the limits of these perspectives have become apparent. Today, as global leaders sound the death knell of neoliberalism, so too have scholars begun re-engaging the macrosociological. In response to decades of tax evasion and capital flight, they are exploring central banking and democratic finance. In response to the climate crisis, they are grappling with questions of state power and green planning. And in response to technological transformations, they are interrogating platform capitalism and digital currency. What is now urgently needed is an agenda capable of weaving together these threads.
The WSES 2025 Meeting contributes to this goal by drawing together a variety of presentations under a new theoretical framework. The two-day conference is organized with support from the World Interdisciplinary Network for Institutional Research (WINIR). Participants include Benjamin Bradlow, Manasi Karthik, Julian Jürgenmeyer, Matthias Thiemann, Stéphanie Barral, Luis Flores, Robert Freeland, Neil Warner, Rohan Advani, İrem İnal, I-Lun Shih, and doctoral students from the Department of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Wisconsin School of Economic Sociology (WSES) 2023 Meeting
10 November 2023, Madison, WI, USA
This one-day conference serves as the inaugural meeting of the Wisconsin School of Economic Sociology, a graduate student-run collective for new thinking on economic sociology. With research presentations and panel discussions, the event focuses on new theoretical directions and empirical frontiers. Participants include James Rosenberg, Daniel Seel, Walker Kahn, Sara Gia Trongone, and Marco Izzia.