This research project involves the international comparison of different capital cities to study the place and role of political power and global urban governance in the creation, making and development of capital cities as well as the impacts of grassroots claims and demands about urban and environmental design on these political processes. The following questions will constitute the core of our interrogation: how are the national imaginaries of capital cities forged by the spatial configuration of political symbols? What are the conflictual and/or consensual relationships between different political actors in the conception of capital cities? To what extent could the nature of the political regime have an important impact on this conception with regard to the highly competitive context of planetary urbanization? What are the specific socio-political and economic flows among these countries and how do they in turn influence capital city building? Finally, how is it possible to tackle the interactions between urban design policies and multiple societal and environmental advocacy programs, considering the growing importance of urban democracy in many countries and international agendas? Our main objective is to study, in a comparative manner, the production of capital cities according to three different but interconnected research themes: 1- The spatial imagination and conception of capital cities by national political power, as a symbolic struggle of different political visions. 2- The influence of global urban networks and the circulation of international models in urban development and urban space. 3- The reciprocal impact between urbanisation policies in capital cities and various demands and protests from divergent actors concerning urban spaces and the environment. In order to study these questions, we propose the cases of Ankara, Moscow, Tehran, Abu Dhabi, Nur-Sultan and Cairo. Our choice to focus on these capitals comes from the fact that the countries in which they are located are often present in the studies of international relations in terms of geopolitics, state and diplomatic relations but less in urban studies. The cities of the project are deliberately chosen as being situated in states perceived among an international community as relatively illiberal and non-democratic. We are interested in analysing how authoritarian governments express themselves spatially in the city. The existing scientific literature on this topic has focused primarily on the fixed staging of illiberal political power in political geography and geopolitics, and less has been said on the dynamics between the political regime and city design as well as the lived and perceived spaces in these cities. The main contribution of the project will be the realisation of an international comparison of cities including their diversity, particularities, and also their shared strategies. What interests us is to observe if they are affected by similar political and symbolic processes among various actors, have similar strategies of integration in global urbanism and use similar tools in urban space in order to reflect an image of a strong state at the international level despite their diverse histories, settings and cultures. The major ambition of the project is to delve into unexplored fields/areas of urban studies. We will link our research themes through multiple threads that will follow state actors at both national and local levels, inhabitants in their lived and conceived spaces, urban activist networks and civil society. We will focus on political decision-making places of urbanism as well as on the historical and symbolic development of cities. We will bring together different methods and tools and will use especially filmmaking and photography for each stage of the work, not only as a research method but also as a storytelling medium.

VINICULTURE aims to integrate innovative methods in archeosciences to identify the characteristics and the diversity of grapevines and wines produced in France, since the origins of viticulture to the Middle Ages. Wine plays a major social and symbolic role since Protohistory. It is a prized exchange product carried over lost distances. The grapevine became a major plant species in terms of economy, landscape, culture and symbolism. Great progress has been accomplished lately by French archaeology concerning the history of vine cultivation and wine making: the circulation of wine, extension of vine cultivation under roman rule, production sites and techniques, vineyards and plantation practices. Despite this progress, fundamental aspects remain unclear. Our knowledge of the wines available before the Middle Ages derives mainly from written documents of different origins and sparse inscriptions on amphorae. Concerning the vines, written documents are practically unusable, and the first real information has been provided by archaeobotany. We now take advantage of recent methodological advances (Morphogeometry, Next Generation Sequencing) to put forward a holistic approach, no longer considering grapevines and wine as generic categories, but instead describing their diversity and analyzing their spatial and chronological dynamics in France, from the Neolithic to the Middle Ages. France is an excellent area to observe the evolution of vine cultivation and wine making in the long run, making it possible to integrate most of the major Euro-Meditteranean exchanges concerning wine, such as the Phoenician, Greek and Roman colonial movements and cultural changes linked to the spread of Christianity and Islam. France also offers the perfect background to study the diffusion of viticulture from the Mediterranean to temperate Europe and its implications in terms of adaptation and re-composition of the diversity of vines and wine. We will analyze plant remains as well as archaeological containers (pottery and wood jars) collected according to strict sampling procedures. Our approach will combine archaeobotany, geometric morphometrics, archaeogenetics, biochemistry and experimental archaeology. By exploiting the potential of Database I2AF and the national network of collaborations Bioarcheodat, Archaeobotany will provide access to a large data set and supply the indispensable background for the observation of the dynamics of Grapevine and of its use since the Neolithic. The most expensive analyses will be restricted to the most promising sites and to the period Bronze Age – Middle Ages. Ancien DNA and Morphometry will provide the means to identify the traits of cultivated grapevines (colour, productivity) and their parenthood with wild grapevines and modern cultivars. As a result, it will be possible to enquire about the geographic origins of the archaeological varieties, to trace the pathways of diffusion and evolution mechanisms. Archaeogenetics and Biochemistry applied to the study of wine jars will provide evidence on the type of wines: of grapes and/or of other fruits, colour, use of additives for aroma and conservation. The role of yeast and bacteria in the fermentation process and in wine conservation will be taken in consideration for the first time. Statistics and models, will allow us to combine data obtained at different levels of analysis, with the information provided by other archaeological sources and by the modern genetic diversity of grapevine and microorganisms, aiming at reconstructing the geo-historical dynamics of vines and wines, in relation to environmental and socio-economic changes.

Liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) are lightly crosslinked liquid crystal polymers, where LC units are oriented uniformly in the whole sample (monodomain). The key characteristic of monodomain LCEs is that they have the capability to deform unidirectionally, reversibly and largely (strains of 20 – 200%) upon stimulation of heat or light. However, electrical energy is the most convenient and the most in demand stimuli, because the nature does use electrical impulses between nerves and muscles/skins for actuation and sensing with extraordinary efficacy, and electrical stimulation is also more widely utilizable as driving forces in industrial devices. Unfortunately, the examples of electroactive LCEs (eLCEs) are still rare. An ionic electroactive polymer (EAP) is typically a tri-layer system consisting of an ionically conducting membrane sandwiched by two electronically conducting polymers as electrodes. This soft ionic EAP can convert either electrical stimulation into reversible and large bending deformations under low voltage (<2V) (actuator) or convert mechanical stimulation into electrical signal (sensor). Unfortunately, large muscle-like unidirectional contraction/elongation cannot be achieved in this ionic EAP. In this project, we propose to develop new multifunctional eLCEs as biomimetic and bio-sourced actuators and sensors, that comprise both LCEs and ionic EAPs, and use as much as possible bio-based starting materials from bio-feedstocks (sugar, cellulose, cholesterol). These new ionic eLCEs can perform bending and unidirectional contraction/elongation in a decoupling way or in a concomitant way, all under the control of electrical signals. This new combination will offer more degrees of freedom and of control and will bring smart materials closer to biomimetic artificial muscles and sensors.