After graduating in Geography and in Urban Planning (Ecole normale supérieure, Paris, Institut français d’urbanisme, Université Paris 8), Eric Verdeil earned a PhD in Geography (2002, Université Paris I-Sorbonne). He specializes in urban geography.

He is Professor of Geography and Urban Studies at Sciences Po and a Researcher at the Centre for International Studies (CERI-Sciences Po). Previously, he was a member of the reasearch team LATTS at Paris Est University and Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées since october 2015. Before, he worked at City Environment Society at the Université de Lyon since 2003. He previously worked at the French Institute of the Near East and keeps close relationships with it. His interests include the sociology and history of urbanism and the current transformations of urban management policies, specifically the topics of urban infrastructure (energy, water, solid waste) and metabolism.

Much of his research was conducted in the Middle East and particularly in Lebanon, after a dissertation dealing with planning cultures and urban polics through the case of Beirut’s reconstruction. His fieldworks later expanded towards the South and the East of the Mediterranean, most notably Jordan and Tunisia, on the topic of urban political ecology of infrastructures. He recently headed with Sylvy Jaglin the research programme Hybridelec.

His publications include Beyrouth et ses urbanistes : une ville en plans (2010, IFPO), Atlas du Liban. Territoires et société (codirection avec Ghaleb Faour et Sébastien Velut, 2007, IFPO) ainsi que Concevoir et gérer les villes. Milieux d’urbanistes du Sud de la Méditerranée (en codirection avec Taoufik Souami, 2006, Economica) and several thematic issues in academic journals. He is a member of the editorial board of Géocarrefour, after having been co-director. He is the author of the academic blog Rumor (Urban Research in the Middle East and elsewhere) where he writes about his current activities.

He published an Atlas des mondes urbains in 2020 with the Atelier cartographique de Sciences Po.

In recent years, his work has focused on urban metabolism, published in French or English, for instance Fernandez Mathieu et Blanquart Corinne and Verdeil Éric, « La terre et le béton : le projet d’urbanisme considéré sous l’angle du métabolisme territorial », VertigO - la revue électronique en sciences de l’environnement, Volume 18 Numéro 3, 2018, et Verdeil Éric, « Seafront Reclamations, Rubble, and Waste: A Metabolic Reading of Lebanese Urbanization » The Derivative • المشتق, October 2021.

See the full list of publications with links to online open access papers.