In the researchers’ down jackets!

For the past few weeks, stickers of down jackets have been popping up all over the Université Grenoble Alpes campus. Intrigued? We tell you more.

Let’s start by naming the culprits, who will soon be unmasked in broad daylight: Raphaël Lachello and Mikaël Chambru, two lecturers in the Humanities and Social Sciences at Université Grenoble Alpes (UGA).

The former, an environmental historian at the Rhône-Alpes historical research laboratory (Larhra), is refreshing the codes of academic communication for the under-25s, and in 2021 will be launching the Twitch channel Chercheur-e-s de montagne (Cdm) with Théophile Chauvin, a^3rd-year undergraduate student.

Théophile, a sociologist at the Groupe de recherche sur les enjeux de la communication (Gresec) and co-coordinator of Labex ITTEM, takes to the game. He hosts his first program on the channel in 2022, in a duo with freelance journalist Pauline Boulet.

In December 2022, the two researchers continued their experimentation and launched the first Twitch live from a scientific symposium on mountain transitions. Trios of commentators made up of researchers and students report, analyze and deconstruct the speakers’ presentations, and conduct offbeat interviews on the spot.

In 2023, Chercheur-e-s de montagne – an offshoot of the young researchers’ collective Perce-Neige – shifted up a gear and gained a national audience by teaming up with the “Angle Droit” streamer for a hut-to-hut itinerary in the Vanoise.

And here we are in 2024, following our two intrepid researchers on their new adventure in popularizing science. Instigated by MSH-Alpes, the Chercheurs en doudoune (Researchers in Down Jackets ) project – winner of theSAPS call for projects – involves a marathon 12-hour non-stop stream on February 6, 2024, enough time to get under the skin, or rather the down jackets, of the two teacher-researchers. At UGA, and a little further afield, at altitude, on the research terrain.

Mikaël can’t wait: “It’s a brand new event in France, off the beaten track, as we like to experiment at Labex ITTEM. We’ll be taking on board a number of our teacher-researcher colleagues in the humanities and social sciences, so that they can tell us about their research in a different way. After several months’ work on this project with the MSH-Alpes team, we’re really looking forward to it!

Would you like to follow Raphaël and Mikaël on their wild ride?
Visit us on February 6, 2024 from 9am to 9pm at: https: //www.twitch.tv/chercheurdemontagne

Until then, on social networks:
Instagram: @msh_alpes; @chercheurdemontagne
Twitter: @MSH_A ; @chercheurdemont

Find out more on the website of MSH-Alpes, project coordinator.