Marie Thébaud-Sorger

Marie Thébaud-Sorger is a Research Associate Professor (researcher) at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) based in Paris at the Centre for the History of Science and Technology – Alexandre Koyré at the EHESS (School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences). After studying the reception of the lighter-than-air machines in French and European societies in her first monograph Ballooning in the Age of Enlightenment (L’aérostation au temps des Lumières, 2009), and the culture of flight on the long run, she has also done research on insurance and compensation practices in the context of artisanal and industrial activities in the eighteenth-century London and Paris. Her current research on “The economies of improvements” intends to link knowledge on materials, marketplace, social reform and technological hazards management. By comparing several urban contexts (in France, Britain, Germany, Netherlands...) her aim is to explore, through an array of artefacts and micro inventions, how inventive practices in Eighteenth century Europe shaped communities around technical improvements.