Déborah Ridel

Déborah Ridel is a Research Engineer in sociology at the School of Advanced Studies in Public Health (EHESP), Rennes, France, and a member of the UMR 6051 ARENES research unit within the Department of Human and Social Sciences (SHS). Holding a doctorate in sociology from the University of Lille, she specialises in the sociology of work, health, and violence, with a particular focus on social and territorial inequalities.

Education:

• 2015–2021: Doctorate in Sociology, CLERSÉ/ED SESAM, University of Lille
  Thesis: Violence in emergencies. An ethnography of care work (defended 1 Dec 2021)

Research Interests

Ridel’s work interrogates how organisational logics, professional identities, and policy instruments shape experiences of violence and inequality within healthcare settings. Her doctoral research combined long-term ethnography and interactionist theory to reveal the reciprocal, polysemic nature of violence in French emergency departments, highlighting the gap between emergency medicine’s life-saving mandate and its latent role in managing social crises.

Currently, she contributes to the PACSILO Project (2022-2025), investigating local coordination policies aimed at vulnerable populations (elderly with loss of autonomy, people with disabilities, mental-health service users). This qualitative study maps evolving coordination ecologies across mental-health, primary-care, disability, and geriatric-care sectors, analysing how national reforms interact with pre-existing local initiatives.

Grants & Projects

• PACSILO Project (2022-2025), funded by the National Solidarity Fund for Autonomy & Institute for Public Health Research – ethnographic study of care coordination.

Laboratory & Team

She conducts research within UMR 6051 ARENES (Acteurs, Régulations, Économie, Normes, Éducation et Société), a multidisciplinary unit bridging EHESP, University of Rennes 1, and other institutions, fostering collaborations across sociology, public-health, and policy studies.