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[Redacția CIVIS ](https://civis.eu/ro/the-civis-newsroom) 2. From Lausanne to Aix-Marseille: tracing research through the archives From Lausanne to Aix-Marseille: tracing research through the archives ===================================================================== 12 octombrie 2026 What can a short-term CIVIS mobility experience offer an early-career researcher? Laurent Audétat, a PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of Lausanne, shares his view on the matter, after a two months stay at the Aix-Marseille University. The conclusion? For a PhD candidate, this type of exchange is a fundamental part of the way a dissertation develops. Laurent’s initial objective was to advance his doctoral research, particularly by consulting archival collections essential to his dissertation. However, the stay also gave him the opportunity to join a new academic community, exchange ideas with fellow researchers, and experience what mobility can bring to doctoral work beyond access to sources alone. A geography of sources ---------------------- My dissertation focuses on access to higher education in the French colonies during the colonial period. From a socio-historical perspective, I examine how access to higher education was organized and developed across different territories of the French Empire, as well as the mechanisms that shaped its conditions. Researching this history also means following its traces. Colonialism has left behind a particular geography of archives: documents produced in Africa or Asia, or circulated between colonial administrations and metropolitan authorities, are now often preserved thousands of kilometres away from the territories to which they relate. As a result, a significant share of the sources required for my research is held at the Archives nationales d’outre-mer (ANOM) in Aix-en-Provence. A fruitful harvest ------------------ ![](https://civis.eu/storage/files/laurent3.jpg)photo Laurent AudétatDuring my stay, I spent much of my time in the ANOM reading room. By the end of these two months, I had gathered several thousand pages of correspondence, reports, statistics, administrative decisions, and regulatory texts produced by the institutions involved in organizing colonial higher education. This work may seem far removed from the traditional image of fieldwork in the social sciences. There are no questionnaires to administer or interviews to conduct. Instead, daily research consists of ordering archival boxes, reviewing files, scanning or transcribing documents, and then spending long hours trying to understand how an administrative note produced decades ago can shed light on a question being studied today. Yet archival research leaves considerable room for the unexpected. Before arriving, I had of course prepared a list of archival collections I intended to consult. But archives never function exactly as one imagines beforehand. Some files that promise a great deal ultimately reveal very little, while others opened almost out of curiosity can fundamentally alter one’s understanding of the research topic. That is what makes archival work so fascinating. Having several weeks on site was particularly important. Extended time allows a researcher to follow up on a reference discovered in one file, request a new series of documents, revisit a hypothesis, and gradually reconstruct the connections between dispersed sources. Changing place, changing perspective ------------------------------------ While the ANOM archives explain my choice of Aix-en-Provence, they do not fully capture the value of my stay. As part of my mobility, I was hosted at amU, notably within the Centre méditerranéen de sociologie, de science politique et d’histoire (MESOPOLHIS) and Sciences Po Aix. Being integrated into a new institution enabled me to pursue my research in a scientific environment different from the one in which I work every day in Lausanne. It also allowed me to build connections with researchers whose fields, periods, or approaches closely resonated with my own work. For a PhD candidate, these exchanges are not merely a social complement to research. They are a fundamental part of the way a dissertation develops. Presenting one’s topic to someone unfamiliar with it, explaining a research challenge, or discussing the interpretation of a document from a different perspective forces us to articulate ideas that may have seemed self-evident within a familiar environment. Changing universities therefore also means temporarily changing one’s interlocutors and exposing one’s research to new questions. In this sense, my stay combined two forms of intellectual displacement: the one produced by the archives themselves, which confront my hypotheses with traces of the past, and the one that emerges from engagement with another academic community. Mobility is therefore not simply a change of workplace - it also transforms the perspective from which we view our own research object. Mobility designed around a Doctoral Project ------------------------------------------- University mobility is often associated with exchanges lasting a semester or a full academic year. Yet doctoral researchers frequently have different needs. A dissertation develops over several years and may require multiple forms of mobility, each serving a specific purpose: consulting archival collections, conducting fieldwork, collaborating with a specialist, participating in the life of a research center, or simply benefiting from a different environment for a few weeks in order to advance a particular stage of the project. From this perspective, the possibility of undertaking shorter mobilities directly linked to research needs becomes highly meaningful. My stay at amU was a clear example of this approach. Two months provided enough time to conduct intensive archival research and immerse myself in a new academic environment, while also fitting into the broader timeline of my doctoral project. In this regard, CIVIS represents a particularly valuable framework for early-career researchers. Financial support is, of course, a key aspect. Spending several weeks in another city involves accommodation, transportation, and numerous additional costs that can quickly make a research stay difficult to organize. Yet the value of CIVIS extends beyond funding mobility. The fact that UNIL and amU belong to the same alliance also facilitates institutional connections and provides a framework for academic hosting. Mobility can thus be conceived not simply as a journey, but as an integrated component of doctoral training and inter-university collaboration. Moving researchers, but also ideas ---------------------------------- Ultimately, the value of scientific mobility cannot be measured solely by the number of kilometres travelled, or even by the volume of documents collected. The archives I consulted in Aix-en-Provence constitute an important body of material that I will continue to analyse long after the end of my stay. But the discussions, encounters, and questions that emerged over those two months are also part of what returned with me to Lausanne. ![](https://civis.eu/storage/files/laurent1.jpg)photo Laurent AudétatPerhaps this is where an alliance such as CIVIS can play a particularly meaningful role in research: not merely by enabling researchers to move temporarily from one university to another, but by fostering habits of circulation between institutions and academic communities that still largely operate within their own national and disciplinary spaces. For early-career researchers, this circulation occurs at a particularly significant moment. A doctorate is precisely a period during which a research topic, a way of working, and a scientific network are developed simultaneously. Even a mobility experience lasting only a few weeks can nurture all three dimensions at once. What I take away most from this experience is that a successful mobility is not an interruption in a doctoral project. You leave with a research idea, confront it with new sources and new people, and return with a project that is no longer quite the same. 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