Solène Brun

Solène Brun is a Researcher (Chargée de recherche) at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), affiliated with the Institut de recherche interdisciplinaire sur les enjeux sociaux (IRIS), a multidisciplinary research unit involving CNRS, EHESS, Inserm, and Sorbonne Paris Nord University. Her work centers on racialization, mixed-race families, transracial adoption, and racial socialization in France.

Her research focuses on how race is learned and negotiated within family settings, particularly in transracial adoptive families and mixed-race couples. She explores the institutional production of racial categories, especially within the medical field, and the dynamics of whiteness and racial identity formation. Her work bridges comparative perspectives between French and American sociologies of race.

The trends in her publications reveal a strong emphasis on qualitative and ethnographic studies of race in everyday life, with a recurring focus on naming practices, bodily experiences, parental socialization, and institutional colorblindness in France. Her recent and forthcoming articles engage critically with racial categorization, identity negotiation, and the challenges of researching race in contexts that officially deny its existence.

• Co-author, La domination blanche, Textuel, 2024
• Co-author, Derrière le mythe métis, La Découverte, 2024
• Co-author, Sociologie de la race, Armand Colin, 2022

Brun supervises master’s theses in migration studies at Paris 1/EHESS and is a member of the executive board of the 'Socializations' thematic group of the French Sociological Association. She has collaborated extensively with scholars such as Claire Cosquer, Patrick Simon, and Juliette Galonnier on research related to race, identity, and social inequality.

She is actively involved in editorial and academic leadership roles, including coordinating special issues of peer-reviewed journals like Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales. Her work contributes significantly to advancing critical race studies within the French academic context.