In March 2026, Héloïse Berkowitz, a senior research fellow (HDR) in Section 40 (Economics and Management), affiliated with the Laboratory of Labour Economics and Sociology (LEST), Aix-Marseille University (AMU), and Amandine Pascal, University Professor of Management and Business Sciences at Aix-Marseille University (AMU) within the Faculty of Economics and Management, affiliated with the Laboratory of Labour Economics and Sociology (LEST), have been elected as co-directors of the LEST following a process of collective consultation and the presentation of their co-directorship proposal at a general meeting. They took up their posts on 1er July 2026.
Personal journeys rooted in their communities
After completing a PhD in management at the École Polytechnique’s Centre for Management Research in 2016, Héloïse Berkowitz was recruited by the CNRS at the Toulouse School of Management Research (TSM-R). Then, in 2020, she applied for a secondment to LEST, where she defended her HDR in 2024. Her career has been characterised by interdisciplinarity and open science.
She has coordinated or participated in several national and international projects, particularly those relating to governance arrangements between organisations and the dynamics of social transformation.
From 2020 to 2022, she was co-editor-in-chief of the open science journal M@n@gement, for which she co-drafted the first open data policy and also co-founded the Peer Community in Organisation Studies, as part of the PCI initiative, supported by the CNRS and Aix-Marseille University. She co-coordinates the Standing Working Group on meta-organisations at the European Group on Organisation Studies and is an elected member of the Executive Committee of RC17 (Sociology of Organisations) at the International Sociological Association. At LEST, since 2024, she has co-coordinated the new research area ‘Changes, Organisations and Transitions’ (COT). She co-led the MATIN seminar on transition issues for five years, and co-organised the COT research area’s festival in 2026 on alternatives.
Finally, she has been coordinating the laboratory’s support for the CNRS competitive examination in management sciences since 2024. In 2022, she was awarded the CNRS bronze medal and, in 2023, the Provence Departmental Research Prize for her work on meta-organisations and the ecological and social transition.
After completing a PhD in management at the University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis in 2006, Amandine Pascal was recruited to the LEST (FEG-AMU). She passed the national agrégation examination in 2015 and returned to the LEST in 2016.
Specialising in design science research, epistemology and Information Systems Management, her research activities form part of projects of increasing scope, with a particular focus on contemporary issues relating to digital technologies. This momentum has recently resulted in her securing Horizon Europe funding, enabling her to establish international collaborations centred on the themes of blockchain, the commons and digital transformation.
More broadly, his work is carried out within the framework of collaborative projects, as part of interdisciplinary networks, and combines scientific output, the organisation of seminars and the development of research programmes. His involvement in institutes such as InCIAM reflects this commitment to contributing to cross-disciplinary scientific initiatives.
A member of the LEST Laboratory Council since 2024, and innovation lead, she has played an active role in the life of the laboratory. She previously chaired the LEST PhD Committee and led a research area seminar on Work & Digital Technology. Amandine Pascal also served as vice-president and then president of an academic association, the Association for Information Management (AIM) from 2015 to 2021, an elected member of Section 40 (formerly Section 37) of the CNRS, and is currently an elected member of the CNU 06.
A process of participatory discussions and dialogue about the project
The plan for the laboratory’s co-direction, spearheaded by the new co-directors, was developed with the support of the Secretary-General and the outgoing management team. The plan emerged from preparatory work involving collective discussions and the joint development of the project with all members of the laboratory. Héloïse and Amandine facilitated several collective discussions organised on a participatory basis, with collaborative working sessions (involving individual reflection, group work and plenary sessions) centred on key issues concerning the laboratory’s functioning and individual and collective needs.
They also gathered a great deal of individual feedback and held discussions with the heads and co-heads of other units, with outgoing and former heads of LEST, with the scientific management of CNRS SHS, and with the heads of the main departments at amU.
What the LEST has in common
In particular, the group discussions helped to confirm what LEST had in common: disciplinary and epistemic pluralism; the importance of the physical space, the dedicated team and the laboratory’s own tools; a focus on real-world work; science that is open to society; critical reflexivity; and a commitment to the collective. These discussions also revealed conflicting constraints within the laboratory’s activities, stemming from its nature and institutional context; for example, the contradictions between knowledge as a common good and as capital serving the purposes of competition.
Finally, on the basis of these discussions, Héloïse and Amandine put forward at the general meeting a number of key priorities for action and concrete proposals, arising from the collective discussions, aimed at 1) raising the profile of the laboratory’s common vision and shared objectives, 2) to continue clarifying the structures, rules of accountability and mechanisms for participation, in line with the actions undertaken by previous leadership teams, 3) and to create spaces for discussing contradictions.
A new chapter in the laboratory’s collective journey
The co-directors would like to thank the members of the laboratory, in particular the management team and the research support team, for their work – which often goes unnoticed – in fostering and sustaining the collective spirit, thereby making collaborative work at LEST possible.
They wish to frame their mandate within a framework of collaboration, active listening and collective reflection, with a focus on the actual work carried out – both in terms of production and reproduction – and on maintaining the conditions that enable the laboratory to function as a vibrant, demanding and welcoming space for research, work and training.
Against a backdrop of accelerating and far-reaching changes in the academic world, higher education and research, and in the world of work more generally, the collective aim is to support the laboratory’s capacity to foster cross-disciplinary exchanges, to facilitate dialogue between diverse approaches, disciplines and professions, and to strengthen the conditions for a sustainable and critical form of collective work.
