The Interfaces axis of the Institut ExposUM

TheExposUM institute aims to establish a reference institute for the study, training and science-society interaction of the exposome, i.e. the socio-environmental determinants of human health.

What is the exposome?
The exposome is the sum total of an individual's lifelong exposure to the environmental and social factors that influence his or her health, as well as the onset, progression and severity of infectious and non-communicable human diseases. In this sense, the exposome is the environmental counterpart of the genome.

Thus, research on the exposome can just as easily be concerned with environmental pollution, water, air or soil quality, vector-borne diseases, access to healthcare, ways of living in a given area, health inequalities, public health policies, etc.

To find out more about the exposome concept, listen to this podcast from France Culture's méthode scientifique: Exposome podcast

Presentation of the Interfaces Axis and the team

The aim of the Institut ExposUM's Interfaces axis is to create a dynamic for valorizing research results at the interface between science and society. 

At the academic level, the Interfaces axis aims to strengthen interdisciplinarity around the exposome, by encouraging dialogue between the social sciences (sociology, anthropology, geography, etc.), the medical and environmental sciences, the engineering sciences and so on.

In addition, the Interfaces axis aims to strengthen collaborations between academic researchers in Occitanie, civil society (associations, NGOs, producer groups, patient associations, SCOOP) and public players (ARS, elected representatives of the metropolis, players in the Occitanie region, local authorities) around transdisciplinary actions, by identifying and supporting convergences with other health/environment dynamics involving academic, public and associative players.

The Interfaces team takes a territorial approach to its actions, supporting new collaborations between public and academic players, while involving civil society, for example by creating new spaces for Science/Decision interaction and translating social demands for research.

The Interfaces team is based at the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme SUD (MSH SUD, Unité d'appui et de recherche 2035 CNRS-UM-UPVM) and draws on its facilities: general services and management, image center, ICI-ELA (incubator for extended interdisciplinarity), science-society platform, etc. 

Activities in the Interfaces area are carried out in close collaboration with players in the Occitanie RIVOC Key Challenge, in particular in the V2MOC project, which aims to gain a better understanding of vector-borne infectious risks in the context of the greening of the Montpellier and Toulouse metropolises, in collaboration with the MAK'IT (Montpellier Advanced Knowledge Institute on Transitions) at the University of Montpellier, the ImpresS (Impact of Research in the South) team at CIRAD and other research teams.

The Interfaces axis also collaborates with UM's Pôle Universitaire d'Innovation (PUI), which targets innovation and private-sector players for the economic valorization of innovations.

The team

The Interfaces axis is supervised by Aurélie Binot¹also a member of the ExposUM CODIR.

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, Alexandre Guichardaz, a consultant in concertation engineering, works with the team for 20% of his time, supporting and leading the cohort of ExposUM-winning project leaders.

Interfaces activities

The activities of the interfaces axis can be structured around four main points:

1. Support for the cohort of project leaders funded by the Institut ExposUM
2. Promoting interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary initiatives from exposome projects
3. Running a permanent seminar to stimulate interdisciplinary thinking on the exposome
4. Support for inter- and trans-disciplinary territorial initiatives in the Occitanie region

1. Support for the ExposUM project cohort

The Interfaces axis supports ExposUM-funded project teams to encourage interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary processes within projects, if deemed relevant by the project leaders, and to foster collaboration between project teams. This support is offered to all volunteer winning teams. In 2023, this represents 14 potential teams (7 research projects, 5 doctoral nexuses, 2 fellowships), to which the winning teams from subsequent years will be added.
Find out more about community development...

Various workshops and meetings are offered on different themes:

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

Various animation formats are available:

2. Support for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary initiatives

Call for expressions of interest

To encourage transdisciplinary projects with a territorial impact and networking between actors∙rices from research and civil society, the ExposUM institute is offering a new support scheme aimed at research teams from the I-Site community and their associative partners, to highlight their research on themes linked to the exposome, environmental health or global health around territorial issues at the Science-Society interface.

Events must include at least one communication activity (conference, event, film or documentary screening) to showcase the initiative at the Science-Society interface and share transdisciplinary experience across the I-SITE.

This "Interactions Sciences/Société" call for expressions of interest supports research-action initiatives that strengthen collaborations between I-SITE members and civil society (local authorities, associations and cooperatives, citizens' collectives, government departments such as the ARS, etc.). This support is intended to support and promote transdisciplinary research-action initiatives that are in the design phase (funding exploratory actions to enable a future research-action project), in progress (funding internships, surveys, dissemination events) or completed (promoting the initiative).

Supported events will include at least one communication action to highlight the transdisciplinary initiative and share experience on the levers and barriers of transdisciplinarity at I-SITE level.

Call for territorial project incubation

A call for incubation of territorial projects s, aimed at identifying and supporting projects around health-environment issues with high territorial impact has been published until June 2024. It is now closed.

3. Permanent seminar

The general aim of the permanent seminar is to encourage the emergence of new research issues at the interface between health and the environment, by providing tools for interdisciplinary thinking and reflecting on the links between research and society. Through monthly sessions involving researchers from a variety of backgrounds, the aim is to bring together a research community around the notion of the exposome and health-environment issues, and to encourage reflection on the conduct of inter- and trans-disciplinarity.

The presentations scheduled as part of this seminar will contribute to the participants' reflections along three main lines:

1. The notion of Environment: these sessions will focus on the opposition between a "pathogenist" conception of an environment as a reservoir of pathogens and a "salutogenist" conception in which the environment is apprehended through socio-ecological functions that regulate their emergence.
2. The limits of the ambition to integrate: these sessions will question the modalities envisaged for an interdisciplinarity that integrates biological, social and environmental factors, and the ways of dealing with different epistemological and methodological frameworks .
3. Interaction between research, politics and social actors: these sessions will explore the potential impact of exposome research on civil society actors, and the possibilities of including their demands and proposals in a logic of mutual translation between non-academic and academic actors.

Upcoming sessions of the permanent seminar

• Critical theory of exhibitions
  Seminar focus: "Notion of environment"
  October 10, 2024 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm
  Speaker: Gilles Moutot, Philosopher at the Faculty of Medicine, UMontpellier

If you'd like to be notified of future permanent seminar sessions, please email Mariline Poupaud or Tiphaine Lefebvre to be added to our mailing list.

Past sessions of the permanent seminar

Previous sessions have been filmed and are available online.

• L'exposome : enjeux épistémologiques de l'intégration en santé-environnement
  Seminar theme: "The limits of the ambition to integrate"
  Speakers: Élodie Giroux and Yohan Fayet

• Embodied ecologies: residents' sensitive knowledge of their exposure to chemicals in urban life and their strategies for reducing it
  Seminar focus: "Notion d'environnement" June 26, 4:00 pm to 5:30 pm
  Speaker: Anita Hardon, health anthropologist and biologist, Wageningen University, Netherlands

• Health and environmental issues in the face of public ignorance and inaction
  Seminar theme: "Limits to the ambition of integration" and "Interaction between research, politics and social actors"
  Speaker: Emmanuel Henry, political scientist and sociologist, professor at Université Paris Dauphine-PSL and researcher at the Institut de recherche interdisciplinaire en sciences sociales (IRISSO, CNRS, INRAE).

• Interactions between scientific knowledge and political decision-making in health-environment: The experience of a transdisciplinary working group in Brazil - November 22, 2023, in collaboration with Mak'it.
  Seminar focus: "Interaction between research, policy and social actors"
  Thespeaker, Jean Paul Metzger, Mak'it guest ecologist, presented the center BiotaSynthesis center he heads. This center involves the academic sector and members of the government in transdisciplinary health-environment issues in Sao Paulo, Brazil. He underlined the importance of syntheses approaches in health-environment to foster dialoguebetween science and policy, and to enable the co-construction of public prevention policies.

• Reconnecting scientific and citizen knowledge about environmental health: The role of eco-citizen institutes for pollution knowledge - December 14, 2023
  Seminar focus: "interaction between research, policy and social actors"
  This session explores the role of citizen institutes for pollution knowledge, which are third-party research institutes based on three pillars: the production of territorialized knowledge, the joint treatment of environmental and health damage, and participation. This session provided food for thought on how to better articulate scientific and citizen knowledge, with regulatory practices, for more effective and precautionary public action in environmental health.
  Speakers : Philippe Chamaret, chemist and director of the Institut écocitoyen de Fos, Viviane Thivent, elected representative from Narbonne and promoter of the Institut écocitoyen de l'Aude, Yann Philippe Tastevin, anthropologist at the CNRS, head of the Observatoire transdisciplinaire des changements environnementaux de Sébikotane Diamniadio (Senegal), Sofia Bento, sociologist at the University of Lisbon, in charge of participatory research for the Observatoire Hommes Milieux d'Estarreja (Portugal) and Christelle Gramaglia, sociologist at the UMR-G-EAU of INRAE in Montpellier, author of a book on citizen experiences and metrology of contamination.

• Interdisciplinarity between human and social sciences and life and environmental sciences: brakes and levers within a scientific community concerned with infectious risks and vectors - December 19, 2023, in collaboration with Kim Rive and RIVOC - Seminar theme: "the limits of the ambition to integrate"
  During this session, the speaker shared his analyses based on a sociological survey of the brakes and levers on interdisciplinarity between human and social sciences and life and environmental sciences. In an attempt to explain the paucity of effective interdisciplinary collaboration within projects, despite the interest of both EVS and SHS players, the speaker returned to sociological definitions of "professions", applying them to the scientific profession. This presentation does not provide a turnkey answer to interdisciplinary research, but does shed light on the obstacles that need to be discussed in any collaborative project.
  Speaker: Jérémy Rollin, researcher in sociology-politics at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Montpellier.

• La Plateforme Portuaire de Surveillance Environnementale de Cotonou, Bénin : une initiative mutli-acteur-rices pour la gestion des invasions biologiques liés au trafic maritime international. A concrete example of operationalizing research at the science/society interface - February 8, 2024
  Seminar focus: "interaction between research, policy and social actors"
  During this session, speakers shared their experiences around the creation of La Plateforme Portuaire de Surveillance Environnementale Dans le Port Autonome de Cotonou in Benin, officially inaugurated at the end of 2021. This Platform is the first laboratory dedicated to monitoring and supporting the management of invasive species, in particular rodents carrying vectors and pathogens, to see the light of day within an African port. Its implementation is the fruit of numerous interactions between academic and non-academic partners, and is an emblematic example of the possible operationalization of scientific research in the service of societal issues.
  Speakers: Gauthier DOBIGNY and Tasnime ADAMJY, UMR CBGP (IRD), researchers in ecology-evolution.

• Eternal pollutants: between research and the implementation of public prevention policies
  Seminar focus: "Interaction between research, policy and social actors"
  March 26, 3:00 pm to 4:30 pm, in collaboration with Mak'it
  Speaker: Patrick Allard, Mak'it guest, Professor at the Institute for Society and Genetics at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), researcher in genetics, epigenetics, developmental biology and environmental health.

4. Territorial actions and networking

Public policies and players

The Interfaces team participates in the "health ecology" working group, initiated by the Metropole and the city of Montpellier, which also brings together a number of research institutes, a hospital and public operators. The Interfaces team is particularly involved in working group no. 3 on impact monitoring and evaluation (using impact pathway methodology) of new forms of governance and collaboration between scientists and the public sector on health-environment issues.

The Interfaces axis is in contact with the people in charge of the Occitanie Regional Health-Environment Plan 4 (led by the Occitanie Regional Health Agency-ARS and the Regional Directorate for the Environment, Planning and Housing -DREAL) to ensure synergy between our actions.

On an ad hoc basis, the Interfaces team supports international teams working at the science-decision interface on health-environment issues. For example, thanks to the support of CIRAD's ImpresS team, Brazilian researchers and a civil servant involved in the Biotasynthesis center were able to draw up an "ex ante" impact pathway for their project(consult the report online).

Au printemps, in collaboration with the Centre des politiques de la terre, are organizing the fifth edition of the Campus Anthropocène/Ecole de printemps "territoires en santés" experimental teaching program, which will take place in Montpellier from March 31 to April 4.

Researchers and representatives of civil society (elected representatives, technical staff, students, associations, artists) will work together in the Montpellier area to examine the ins and outs of territorial habitability in the face of 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 propose to examine the question of how to live in good health in the Anthropocene in the Montpellier region. More specifically, we'll be looking at issues relating to water and rivers (water resources, water quality), nature-based solutions to climate change and associated vector risks (vegetation to combat urban heat islands, tiger mosquitoes and infectious diseases, etc.), and relations between humans and non-humans (wild animals and invasive exotic species and associated health risks) within a One Health framework.

Au printemps, in collaboration with the Centre des politiques de la terre, are organizing the fifth edition of the Campus Anthropocène/Ecole de printemps "territoires en santés" experimental teaching program, which will take place in Montpellier from March 31 to April 4.

Researchers and representatives of civil society (elected representatives, technical staff, students, associations, artists) will work together in the Montpellier area to examine the ins and outs of territorial habitability in the face of 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 propose to examine the question of how to live in good health in the Anthropocene in the Montpellier region. More specifically, we'll be looking at issues relating to water and rivers (water resources, water quality), nature-based solutions to climate change and associated vector risks (vegetation to combat urban heat islands, tiger mosquitoes and infectious diseases, etc.), and relations between humans and non-humans (wild animals and invasive exotic species and associated health risks) within a One Health framework.

Support for two local initiatives for 2024

Mobitiques research-action project on the prevention of tick-borne diseases

ExposUM supports the Mobitique project. The Interfaces team prepared, hosted and ran five 3-hour workshops bringing together researchers in tick ecology (Vectopôle Sud), researchers in the humanities and social sciences (educational sciences, social psychology), people from the ARS (vector control), associations (CTIQUE, Graine Occitanie), and a representative of breeders (director of the Groupement de Défense Sanitaire Occitanie). This pilot project is built around the ambitions of Occitanie's Plan-régional Santé-Environnement 4.

This incubation has led to an action plan for 2025, supported by the environmental education association Le Graine. This project proposes to design and implement educational actions aimed at getting citizens more involved in the "tick" risk issues in their local area, and also to test one or more scientific research questions in the field of sociology. The aim is to increase citizen involvement, while scientifically measuring and evaluating the impact of public awareness on behavioral change, using a dedicated research protocol.

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

The Institut écocitoyen pour l'observation des pollutions de l'Aude received support from ExposUM en 2024. This institute was inspired by the Institut écocitoyen pour la connaissance des pollutions de Fos sur mer, which since the 2010s has brought together academics and local residents working together to develop research that answers questions about the long-term consequences of the forced industrialization that began in the late 1960s and is regularly relaunched. 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 health-environmental measures, within the framework of a transformation of territorial dynamics.

Social science training courses are offered to volunteers in the Aude region. The courses are available online.

A festival was organized in November 2024 to give the inhabitants of the Aude region a playful look at the crucial issues surrounding environmental health in the region. The festival brought together experts, activists, scientists and artists to offer a rich and instructive experience.

Support for two regional initiatives for 2025

Two projects have received support from ExposUM for the year 2025

The Rivière project "Risques Infectieux en VIlle: Ecologie de la santé appliquée aux inteRactions entrerE ragondins et humains" studies human-ragondine interactions in the Lez basin, and focuses on the health risks associated with leptospirosis, a zoonosis transmitted by these rodents. The project is developing an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approach to assessing these risks.

The Vaxinter project looks at how disciplines can be combined to answer the questions raised by vaccination at the science/society interface. This project will involve two researchers in the humanities and social sciences, with the aim of initiating a dialogue between the biomedical sciences and the humanities and social sciences. A study will be carried out in experimental economics to explore the impact of media coverage and vaccination on caregivers. Work will be carried out in communication sciences to strengthen links between science and citizens.

Actions for the general public

The Interfaces team takes part in and organizes events for the general public. For the year 2024, the ExposUM institute will be presented at the Fête de la Science on October 12 at the Lunaret Zoo.

1. Aurélie Binot, who has joined MSH SUD as deputy director, is responsible for coordinating the ExposUM Institute's "Interfaces Sciences Société" axis 2 and is a member of the ExposUM CODIR; she is appointed for these missions in her capacity as a CIRAD researcher recognized in this field. As part of this axis 2, the UM can draw on the MSH SUD's action-research facilities and the staff assigned to them, with this UAR then able to take advantage of the implementation of actions on behalf of the ExposUM Institute. ︎