The Marie and Louis Pasteur University (France), through its two centres (LaSA and SEFAE), offers in-depth expertise in sociology, anthropology and psychology on the key themes of the PAGENS programme: childhood, adulthood, old age, family and parenthood, social policies and life courses, contributing directly to the first objective of the project. The LaSA centre is a leader in participatory methodologies conducted with vulnerable people (children, the elderly, people with disabilities or illnesses). The UMLP coordinates dissemination and awareness-raising activities (WP3) and co-leads WP6.
UNIPR (Italy) will play a key role in both WP2 and WP4, thanks to its methodological expertise and focus on social vulnerability. Specifically, the Department of Law, Politics and International Studies has developed significant and interdisciplinary expertise in participatory methods applied to research involving specific target groups (e.g., children, young people, and vulnerable populations) useful not only from a methodological point of view (research techniques), but also from a legal point of view (ethical issues, handling of sensitive data). The Department will host a group training on participatory research with vulnerable groups (2.2.2) and will organise a conference on vulnerability in different contexts (4.4.2).
The Department of Sociology and Business Law at UNIBO (Italy) is an interdisciplinary department composed of sociologists, economists and legal experts. It has solid expertise in the study of life courses from various perspectives, such as work and professional life, health and illness issues, and municipal and local well-being. It will contribute legal and economic expertise to the analyses carried out in WP4, 5 and 6. Marco Alberio will co-lead T6.2.
At UPO (Italy), the Department of Law and Economic, Political and Social Sciences (DIGSPES - Alessandria) is an interdisciplinary team composed of sociologists, economists and legal experts, placing UPO at the heart of work on methodological aspects and interdisciplinary and participatory approaches within WP6 and WP4 (T4.1). More specifically, UPO will share its in-depth expertise gained over two decades of research on childhood, age, health and rights, conducted by sociology experts from LAB.SIA (Child and Adolescent Health Laboratory) and legal experts from CEIMS (Interdepartmental Centre for Healthcare Management). This expertise will be leveraged in on-the-job training activities in selected countries (WP4 and WP6).
EthnoArt (France) is a civil society association particularly involved in WP2, with a special focus on “Interdisciplinarity with the arts: giving space to the sensory at all stages of research.” ethnoArt's main objective is to combine scientific and artistic mediation in order to make knowledge and methods in the humanities and social sciences accessible. ethnoArt targets a diverse audience in a variety of contexts (schools, social fields, training for professionals). The theme of migration and intercultural issues is central to the association's thinking. It will therefore also be involved in WP5, participating in collective fieldwork in African countries. ethnoArt will host nine researchers for training in participatory methods (2.1.2).
The TETRAS research unit at the University of Lorraine (Nancy), through its thematic cluster TAGES (‘Existential Transitions, Age, Gender and Health’), brings together mainly sociologists and anthropologists studying the issue of ageing, particularly in relation to health. The team approaches age as a social relationship, interacting with other social relationships that structure contemporary societies (gender, class and race). TETRAS will host researchers from Pagens who are undergoing training in audiovisual methods (WP2), health issues (WP4) and age norms (WP6).
The CNRS (France), through the French Center for Ethiopian Studies (Addis Ababa, Ethiopia), as the project coordinator, will be responsible for WP1.
The French Center for Ethiopian Studies (CFEE), UAR3137, is a joint unit of the French Institute for Research Abroad (IFRE) of the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs (MEAE) and the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS / INSHS). Based in Addis Ababa, it builds on nearly a century of Franco-Ethiopian scientific cooperation. The PAGENS project falls under the CFEE’s Research Area 3, focusing on contemporary transformations in the Horn of Africa, and intersects with the cross-cutting themes of Gender and Heritage.
Given the CFEE’s thematic and methodological expertise in history, geography, and sociology, the center will play a key role in WP5, led by Constance Perrin-Joly, the project leader. The CFEE-CNRS offers a mobility program dedicated to artistic approaches, in collaboration with Insuco Togo (Program 2.1.1), and a program on visual approaches applied to migration research with the AAU-IES (5.2.1).
The LinCS Laboratory (France), UMR 7069, Université de Strasbourg, has interdisciplinarity as its central paradigm, as promoted by cultural studies, combining sociology, anthropology, contemporary history, geography as well as ethics. These research topics overlap with those of PAGENS: stages of life, the body, and health. LinCS will lead WP4 and contribute to the training programme on “Material cultures, observation of bodily techniques and health” (4.3.2.). LinCS will also play a broader role in the fieldwork-based training sessions organised by WP4 and WP6, hosting colleagues and sending its members to other institutions. In addition, it will participate in WP2 and co-organise training sessions focused on visual methods (2.2.2) and art therapy (2.1.3).
Seminar 3 – WP5 – Programme 5.2.1 Training through fieldwork and visual approach (Climate change and mobility)
On Wednesday, 18th November 2026 - From 2 pm to 4 pm (UTC +0) : Meet the participants of the 1st mobility
Seminar 2 – WP2 – Program 2.2.3 Participatory methods
On Wednesday, 23rd September 2026 - From 2 pm to 4 pm (UTC +0) : Meet the participants in the 2.2.3 ‘Participatory Methods’ programme following their experience to Colombia.
A programme run by Jeanette Moreno (ICSI Bogotá) and Mónica Cuéllar Gempeler (Pontificia Universidad Javeriana).
Seminar 1 - WP2 Review of the experience in Togo, program 2.1.1 « Art based approach »
On Thursday, 11th June 2026 - From 2 pm to 4 pm (UTC +0) : Meet the participants of the 1st mobility
This collective programme will take place over four workshops of one week each, following the structure:
Week One: The first week will be devoted to sharing the empirical work conducted as part of WP6’s fieldwork, including discussions about each field site and the scientific interests of each participant, as well as an exchange of perspectives on the research approaches employed.
Week Two: Building on this shared understanding, a second week will focus on reviewing the methodological approaches used in relation to the themes of WP6, their heuristic value, and the challenges encountered. Time will be set aside to make progress on the writing projects supported by these training sessions.
Week Three: In addition to the ongoing data analysis work being carried out by everyone, this week will feature presentations by colleagues on the following topic: Investigating age and life trajectories in foreign contexts: lessons learned, ethnocentrism. Lectures and workshops will be organized with an interdisciplinary approach.
Week Four: The final week will be entirely devoted to writing based on the material covered over the previous three weeks.
This programme is only available in France at the University of Aix-Marseille in the autumn of 2029.
The program analyzes social and family policies based on the life trajectories of the populations studied and the institutions that support them. What institutions and mechanisms exist within countries? How are children, adolescents, and the elderly cared for? How are families involved in the various systems and social and educational policies? What are the terms of care? Do these terms of care influence family, educational, and caregiving practices and the development of individuals from early childhood to old age?
The program proposes to analyze family and parental representations and practices, addressing in particular attachment, emotional relationships, parent-child relationships, educational practices, and their influence on the development of babies, children, and young people. It will also address the issue of aging, the experiences of older people according to their different profiles, and more broadly the issue of the transformation of family solidarity and the relationship between autonomy and dependence.
Methods and approaches
Data will be collected in a cross-referenced manner by pairs in different countries in order to obtain as much information as possible, and will then be sent to other members of the group for analysis.
This program insists on developing an interdisciplinary approach between sociology, education sciences, ethology, clinical psychology and social psychology. Both sociological and psychological tools will be used during the different fieldworks: interviews & observations.
This program is only available in Ethiopia (CFEE, AAU), Italy (Univ. Bologna), Djibouti (IRICA), Togo (INSUCO), Madagascar (INSUCO) and France (UMLP).
As part of Programme 6.2.1, a two-day symposium on digital technology and the different stages of life will be held; the programme for this event will be finalised over the coming months. Experts on these issues across the life course will be invited to present at the symposium, offering a range of perspectives and interdisciplinary insights.
Scientific Rationale
All societies today are undergoing major transformations both in terms of age categorization—that is, how society classifies and names groups born at similar times—and in terms of the expectations, experiences, and demands associated with these categories. In particular, the global expansion of schooling has led to the emergence of categories of children and young people whose main activity is no longer work but the "profession of student.". With increased life expectancy, the number of people over the age of 70 is also growing on the continents covered by this study. The transition to adulthood varies considerably, depending on the age at which schooling is compulsory, the availability of paid work or employment, the type of housing, but also on norms relating to family formation and parenthood. Globalization has thus profoundly changed the course of life, but social age structures have not been standardized, let alone public policies based on age. Furthermore, these changes vary greatly according to income, social class (up to what age a child/young person goes to school, or when he/she is forced to work), gender (the differences between girls and boys remain significant), health status, and disability.
The research area explicitly adopts an intersectional approach, attentive to the intertwining of age, gender, social class, health status, and disability. As such, it maintains close links with the work carried out in WP4, particularly around vulnerability and health policies and material bodies and cultures, in order to jointly grasp the institutional, social, and embodied dimensions of contemporary transformations of age.
This project aims to develop and implement a collective training protocol through research using qualitative, participatory, and ethnographic methods. It focuses on life courses and age categorizations, enabling a comparative analysis across different sociopolitical, economic, and cultural contexts.
The main areas of research include:
- Changes in life courses across different countries ;
- Age groups in different contexts ;
- Intergenerational transmission of knowledge ;
- Sharing of expertise among members of the program.
Objectives and Methods
The training will draw on qualitative methods, particularly life narratives and ethnographies. Particular attention will be paid to methodological reflexivity, both in terms of the choice of tools and their application in diverse sociocultural contexts. This reflexivity is a central component of the academic exchanges and the educational value of the Marie Curie Staff Exchange program.
This programme is only available in France at the University Marie et Louis Pasteur from January to April 2028.
This programme will involve carrying out research, either in pairs or individually, with colleagues hosting visiting researchers in University of Bologna (Itay), University of Aix-en-Provence (France), Ethnoart (France) and UdM (Montreal).
As these visits focus on field research, each institution will draw up a suitable schedule for hosting the visiting researchers, taking particular account of their areas of research.
Mobilities will be planned in 2028-2029.
Program leaders:
Dominique Harre, Institute for Social Research in Africa
Amina Nouh, Institut de Recherche Indépendant de la Corne d'Afrique
Constance de Gourcy, Aix-Marseille Université
This programme will involve carrying out research, either in pairs or individually, with colleagues hosting visiting researchers in Insuco Madagascar and in Djibouti at IRICA (Institut de Recherche Indépendant de la Corne de l'Afrique).
As these visits focus on field research, each institution will draw up a suitable schedule for hosting the visiting researchers, taking particular account of their areas of research.
Mobilities will be planned in 2027-2028.
Program leaders:
Dominique Harre, Institute for Social Research in Africa
Amina Nouh, Institut de Recherche Indépendant de la Corne d'Afrique
Constance de Gourcy, Aix-Marseille Université
Programme 5.3.1 will take place from February 1st to 5, 2027, following on from programme 5.2.1, which was held in November 2026. Continuing with the theme of visual approaches and methods, this training will focus on photography as a research tool, examining it through the lens of migrations.
These training courses will be open to participants who are hosted either at the French Centre for Ethiopian Studies (CFEE) or Addis Ababa University (AAU).
Program leaders: Constance Perrin-Joly, Centre français des études éthiopiennes and Tirsit Sahledengel, Addis Ababa University
This program is only available in Ethiopia in December 2026 and February 2027.
The first part of this programme will take place from 9 November to 13 November 2026 at the CFEE. The training will be organised over five half-days (afternoons). The aim of the training is to provide an introduction to the use of photography in research, alternating between theory and practical application. Then, over the course of a week, participants in the training week will have the opportunity to put the methods taught during the previous week into practice in the field (Addis Ababa). A post-training presentation session on visual methods will be held on 20 November.
The second part of this programme will take place in February 2027, from 1 to 5 February (as part of 5.3.1 program).
These training courses will be open to participants who are hosted either at the French Centre for Ethiopian Studies (CFEE) and Addis Ababa University (AAU).
Program leaders: Constance Perrin-Joly, Centre français des études éthiopiennes and Tirsit Sahledengel, Addis Ababa University
This task develops an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the effects of "historical events" and "biographical events" on life courses in the global North and South. At the macrosocial level, the objective is to explore how "crises" (economic, environmental, migratory, etc.) generate "emotional climates" and are translated into individual crises or biographical changes. The focus will be on social inequalities, "reminiscence effects" and intergenerational transmission, while taking gender and family structure into account.
This program includes:
- A first mobility session in Addis Ababa in December 2026: featuring a hybrid week from November 30 to December 4 – followed by a week dedicated to writing, in a residential setting from December 7 to December 11;
- A group mobility session in Montreal in June 2027: a hybrid seminar from June 7 to 13, followed by a residential writing week from June 14 to 18.
You are not required to participate in the two mobility events, which may not be accessible to everyone; however, you are strongly encouraged to participate in the three hybrid sessions.
Program leaders:
Cécile Van de Velde, Université de Montréal in Montréal (Canada)
Veronika Kushtanina, Université Marie et Louis Pasteur in Besançon (France)
Constance Perrin-Joly, Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Centre français des études éthiopiennes (CFEE) in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia)
The third axis aims to consider people's life trajectories, paying particular attention to bodies that act with or against the specific material cultures assigned to them and which they use to transform social norms. Here, we propose to draw on intersectional approaches that integrate gender, class, age, and race relations within multicultural societies in the North and South to understand how aging is constrained, facilitated, or transformed by this inseparable pairing of the body and its material cultures.
The objective here will be to document the transformations of these social relationships that structure life courses, by observing and interacting with people in fields limited to a few weeks and easily achievable in both the North and the South, even with minimal mastery of the local language, and regardless of the sociologist's theoretical approach. In addition, this approach will feed into the various WPs: reflection on the survey methods (WP2), data construction and the links between research and art (WP2) depending on the field, health issues and their technologies (WP4), the ecological transformations and human activities (WP5) that they impose, as well as the evolution of age categorizations (WP6).
Depending on their specific interests, seconded researchers will be able to choose a field, such as dietary practices, aesthetic practices, health practices, work, and more.
This programme can take place in Colombia (PUJ, ICSI), France (Univ. Lorraine, Univ. Strasbourg, UMLP), Djibouti (IRICA), Ethiopia (CFEE, IES), Togo (INSUCO Togo), Madagascar (INSUCO Mada) and Canada (UDEM), from February 2026 to September 2029.
Programme leader: Marie Pierre Julien, Université de Lorraine, TETRAS
The second theme aims to explore the concept of vulnerability in a broad sense, focusing on its definitions and the political and institutional responses it elicits. In contemporary debates, vulnerability appears as a particularly central analytical and normative category in the fields of health, social issues, migration policies, aging, childhood, and environmental and digital inequalities.
Vulnerability is not only an individual or biomedical condition: it also constitutes a framework for problematization that helps to guide public action, categorize populations, and legitimize certain intervention mechanisms. Vulnerability is thus frequently translated into indicators, eligibility criteria, administrative categories, or measurement tools produced by—and serving—public policies. This translation is never neutral: it involves trade-offs, prioritizes, defines what is recognized as risk, fragility, or need, and influences access to rights and resources.
The overall objective of the task is therefore to develop a collective reflection on vulnerability policies, comparing diverse institutional and socio-historical contexts and analyzing the tensions between vulnerability, protection, autonomy, empowerment, and social justice.
This programme can take place in Colombia (PUJ, ICSI), France (Univ. Lorraine, Univ. Strasbourg, UMLP), Italy (Univ. Piemont Oriental, Univ. Parma), Djibouti (IRICA), Ethiopia (CFEE, IES), Togo (INSUCO Togo), Madagascar (INSUCO Mada) and Canada (UDEM), from February 2026 to September 2029.
Programme leader: Stefania Fucci, Universita di Parma
