Thomas, Garance

Garance is a French PhD. Candidate at Sciences Po Law School under the supervision of Professor Régis Bismuth. Using interdisciplinary approaches (legal theory, legal history, regulatory theory, anthropology of objects and science and technology studies), she examines the limits of legal definitions and regulations intended to capture waste products. She discusses how legal epistemology, which integrates property, contract, and tort law, misses the mark in defining waste. She examines supply chains as systems of material dispersion between legal orders by following metal and plastic waste products at each stage, from production to waste treatment.

Garance is a graduate in Political Sciences and Public Law, holding two B. A, in Law and in political Sciences (Sorbonne University, 2013) and an M.A in public law and legal theory (Sorbonne University, 2015). Garance was a doctoral exchange student at the European University Institute (2022-2023) and at Harvard Law School (2021-2022), following different courses on critical approaches to law (Sciences and Technology Studies, Law and Political Economy, Critical Legal Studies, etc.).

Garance has designed and taught courses on "Constitutional Law" in different universities (Cergy Pontoise, Rennes 1, Sciences Po) and a course on an interdisciplinary approach toward waste objects (Sciences Po). 

She worked as a public lawyer in both public administration and public jurisdiction (Ministère de l'Interieur, Cour Administrative d'Appel de Nantes).

Her fields of expertise are: 

• Public law
• Environmental law
• Waste law
• Legal Theory and critical approaches
• Science and technology studies
• Property rights

Her overarching interests revolve around property rights, legal theory, Law and society and ecological approaches to law. She is a main contributor in a research group on waste law, the Waste Law reading group.

Contact: garance.thomas@sciencespo.fr

Selected publications