Sophie Duchesne Curriculum vitae - OxPO - University of Oxford

Current research projects:
- comparative qualitative research on British and French national identities. In-depth
interview with English people on being British analysed with qualitative (ATLAS.ti)
and quantitative (ALCESTE) methods, and referring to the former research on French
representations of citizenship. In collaboration with Anthony Heath, Head of the
sociology Department of the University of Oxford. Transcription funded by a British
Academy Small Grant.
- comparative quantitative research on the relationship between national and European
identification (using Eurobarometer data). Collaboration with André-Paul Frognier,
Université de Louvain la Neuve.
- Comparative qualitative research on the dynamic of political discussion in France, the
UK and Belgium. Analysis of focus groups conducted on Europe. Collaboration with
Florence Haegel (Cevipof, Sciences Po), Liz Frazer (Department of Politics, New
college) and Andre-Paul Frognier (Louvain-l-Neuve). Funded by a grant of the French
Ministry of Research, Sciences Po’s European Studies Centre, the Belgian National
Foundation for Scientific Research (FNRS), the Leverhulme Trust and the Nuffield
College Politics Research Fund.
Summary of the research development
Started with a PhD on French representations of citizenship – analysed thanks to in depth
interviews -, my research remains focussed on the questions related to the belonging to a political
community. What social actors do perceive their ties with their fellow citizens? How do the main
cleavages, which structure the democratic political space, change or remain the same? What are
the main impulses of the identifying or belonging processes to a political community? How does
political identity form and change? These are the main questions I try do deal with. After my
PhD, the study on the forming of European identity undertaken in the Belief in Government
program, my project on the learning of politeness financed by the sponsorship of the SEITA, I
took part in a research on political representations in a housing estate in the Paris’s suburb with a
group of researchers of the Cévipof. The difficulties we have experienced both with the
collection and the analyses of interviews have drive us, my colleague Florence Haegel and I, to a
study on the “location” of politics in daily life. This give rise to both a journal issue and a
research group of young researcher of my former laboratory, dedicated to the study on the way
discussions become political. This interest in the process of politicisation of interactions leads
now to a project of comparison between French, British and Belgian political verbal interactions,
undertaken in collaboration with Liz Frazer (University of Oxford).
I have always been interested in methodological questions about in depth interviews and how to
analyse them. Florence Haegel and I recently wrote a short manual, in French, about collective
interviews. During my four years in Oxford, I was involved in a research on British identity, with
qualitative interviews but also, in collaboration with Anthony Heath (University of Oxford), using
quantitative data.
All the time I have been at the Cévipof, I gave lectures in political sociology (I was for the last
three years co-originator of a SOCRATES program of comparative political sociology in
Europe). I am currently supervisor of two PhD on political identity. I was founder member of
the Revue internationale de politique comparée. Following trade union responsibilities, I have been
elected to the Comité national de la recherche scientifique, made up of researchers and lecturers and
responsible for the evaluation of the CNRS researchers and laboratories, and of the competitive
entrance and promotion examinations (for political science and sociology of work).