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Hiring Designer: PEPR TRANSFORM — Aesthetic of Transformation

The médialab is looking for a designer as part of Targeted Action 3, “Aesthetic of Transformation — Sciences, Arts & Society”, within PEPR TRANSFORM.

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Deadline:

Job description

The designer will play a central role in Targeted Action 3, working with the principal investigator, the postdoctoral researcher, and a second designer to develop fieldwork devices for inquiry through the arts. The role involves supporting the creation of material, visual, spatial, digital, and public conditions through which fieldwork can happen with others. These devices will support an equipped and collaborative ethnographic approach, making perceptible the gestures, attachments, hesitations, and ways of doing that standard research protocols often miss. 

The successful candidate will also contribute to the New Assemblies axis by helping turn the Institut Transform’s third place into an experimental space where researchers, artists, citizens, and field actors can gather around emerging ecological sensibilities, share situated concerns, and test collective ways of describing environmental issues.

Design of fieldwork devices

The designer will translate the research questions of Targeted Action 3 into concrete fieldwork devices adapted to each situation. This will involve understanding what the field requires, prototyping suitable formats, testing them with the actors concerned, and adjusting them as the inquiry unfolds. These devices may support observation, mapping, conversation, or public engagement, but their purpose will remain to make transformation observable and discussable, even where it is partial, fragile, or difficult to name.

Multimodal documentation and fieldwork formats

The role includes contributing to multimodal accounts of the gestures of transformation observed in the Laboratoires Terrestres and other field sites. 

They will design forms of documentation that accompany inquiry as it unfolds, rather than illustrating results after the fact, and help preserve aspects of the field that written description alone tends to flatten. This work will support the future integration of field materials into the Institut Transform's situated archives.

Collaboration, production, and dissemination

The designer will contribute to the collective production work of Targeted Action 3 with the principal investigator, the postdoctoral researcher, the second designer, and the wider TRANSFORM team. They will help prepare field encounters, residencies, workshops, and public-facing moments, especially the New Assemblies axis and the final public assembly. Their work will shape the visual, spatial, editorial, and documentary forms through which the project circulates, ensuring that dissemination remains part of inquiry rather than a separate communication layer.

The successful candidate will also contribute to the development of the Sciences Po médialab and TRANSFORM's national and international research networks.

Profile 

Prospective candidates should demonstrate:

Expertise in design research or practice-based design
Expertise in designing formats, tools, and situations for inquiry, collaboration, documentation, or public engagement. They should understand design not only as visual production, but as a way to investigate situations, equip fieldwork, and make complex processes perceptible.

Experience with fieldwork-oriented design
Experience working with situated materials, field constraints, and multi-actor situations. Experience with fieldwork devices, mapping, visual protocols, workshop formats, participatory tools, or multimodal documentation will count as an asset.

Knowledge of arts–sciences relations and research-creation
A strong interest in working at the intersection of design, artistic practices, social sciences, environmental issues, and public experimentation. Experience with residencies, exhibitions, performances, public events, or experimental documentation will be highly valued.

Capacity for multimodal documentation and editorial synthesis
The candidate should be able to transform field materials into clear and shareable formats without reducing their complexity. They should demonstrate strong visual, spatial, editorial, or digital skills, and an ability to organise heterogeneous materials into coherent research supports.

Experience in interdisciplinary collaboration and collective production
Experience in interdisciplinary collaboration is essential. The successful candidate should be comfortable working with researchers, artists, designers, local actors, institutions, and non-academic partners. They should be able to contribute to workshops, residencies, public assemblies, and collective research formats while maintaining a clear design responsibility.

Fluency in French and English
Excellent written and spoken French and English are required as the project involves collaboration with researchers, artists, local actors, and institutions in national and international contexts.

We expect applications from candidates in environmental humanities, science and technology studies, sociology, anthropology, geography, design research, arts-based research, or related fields. We also welcome other disciplinary profiles able to meet the criteria listed above and contribute to the experimental, empirical, and theoretical ambitions of Targeted Action 3.

The project will provide scientific, methodological, personal, and material support in line with the candidate’s knowledge, skills, and research trajectory. 

Working conditions 

The candidate will work at Sciences Po’s médialab in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, as part of a team of researchers, engineers, and designers.

The position starts on December 1, 2026, as an 80% full-time equivalent contract. 

Sciences Po offers a salary of €2,400 per month. The position includes full health cover, paid holidays, working-time reduction days, 50% coverage of public transport, and lunch vouchers.

The position offers the candidate the opportunity to develop an original research profile in a highly interdisciplinary context, at the intersection of environmental humanities, science and technology studies, design research, and arts–sciences relations. 

The candidate will contribute to the creation of the Institut Transform and to the experimental development of Targeted Action 3, while working with a national and international network of researchers, artists, designers, institutions, and territorial actors.

Application procedure

Applicants should send their applications before 16/09/2026 to recrutement.medialab@sciencespo.fr and donato.ricci@sciencespo.fr, specifying “Designer Fieldwork Device — PEPR TRANSFORM / Aesthetic of Transformation” in the email subject line.

Applications must include:

  • A CV;
  • A 2-page narrative résumé describing, in relation to the scope of Targeted Action 3, the candidate’s expected contributions to the generation of new tools, methodologies, or knowledge;
  • Two relevant projects described in the light of the position;

The call will remain open online until the team finds a suitable candidate. We take the careful selection of new team members seriously, and the team may organise several selection interviews as part of the process.

For questions about the position’s content, please contact Donato Ricci at donato.ricci@sciencespo.fr.