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Hiring Designer: PEPR TRANSFORM — New Assemblies and Living Archive

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 work with the principal investigator, the postdoctoral researcher, and the TRANSFORM team to develop the New Assemblies axis and the living archive of Targeted Action 3

The role focuses on the public and archival forms through which situated transformations become visible, discussable, and shareable. The designer will prepare the public assembly as a moment of restitution and experimentation, while developing the living archive as a proof of concept for the Institut Transform for a Habitable Earth. This archive will collect and reactivate gestures, traces, local manifestations, and collective activities, both in the Laboratoires Terrestres and within the Institut Transform.

Design of the living archive

The designer will develop the living archive as a situated system for preserving the vitality of the project’s materials without neutralising them. This work will require careful decisions about selection, context, and activation: what enters the archive, how it remains attached to the situation from which it comes, and how it can be re-opened for discussion. The archive will treat field materials as living signals of shared attention, not as abstract data. It will take form through installations, documents, and situated displays that can be activated on-site and at the Institut Transform, making the archive a space for presentation, debate, and renewed inquiry.

New Assemblies and public formats

The successful candidate will contribute to the New Assemblies axis by creating public formats through which researchers, artists, citizens, and field actors can gather around ecological concerns and turn them into shared problems. A central part of the role will consist of preparing the public assembly of Targeted Action 3, combining performances, installations, and discussions as a moment of restitution and experimentation. This assembly will test how artistic formats can intervene in research and support the co-writing of a strategic document that defines new evaluation criteria for artistic practices in scientific inquiry.

Collaboration, production, and dissemination

The designer will help connect field materials, archival forms, and public situations across Targeted Action 3. They will work with the research team, residents, invited fellows, and partners to shape the forms through which the project circulates inside and beyond the Institut Transform. Their work will ensure that dissemination remains an extension of inquiry: a way to activate traces, open discussion, and make the Institut Transform visible as a place where artistic, scientific, and civic practices meet.

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, graphic design, or curatorial design
Expertise in designing visual, editorial, spatial, or public formats that organise materials and open them to interpretation. They should understand design as a practice that shapes how traces are selected, arranged, circulated, remembered, and discussed.

Experience with archives, documentation, or situated collections
Experience working with heterogeneous materials without reducing them to neutral data or homogeneous records. They should pay close attention to questions of selection, context, accessibility, integrity, and dignity, especially when field materials involve situated practices, local actors, and collective experiences.

Capacity to activate archival materials publicly
The candidate should know how to transform documents, traces, and field materials into formats that can support debate, inquiry, and public attention. They should approach the archive as a living and productive system: a way to create connections, raise questions, and make visible what might otherwise remain dispersed or overlooked.

Knowledge of arts–sciences relations and public experimentation
A strong interest in working at the intersection of design, artistic practices, social sciences, environmental issues, and civic engagement. Experience with exhibitions, performances, installations, assemblies, residencies, or experimental publications will count as an asset.

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 public assemblies, workshops, residencies, and multimodal publications 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 design research, graphic design, editorial design, curatorial studies, exhibition design, architecture, arts-based research, digital publishing, or related fields. 

The project will provide scientific, methodological, personal, and material support in line with the candidate’s knowledge, skills, and trajectory. The designer will develop an original profile at the intersection of productive archiving, arts–sciences relations, environmental humanities, and public forms of inquiry.

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 Assemblies and Living Archive — 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.