Alpine toponyms in transition: mutations and appropriation

The postdoctoral fellowship – Alpine toponyms in transition: socio-ecological mutations and appropriation of place names in mountain environments – aims to provide an account of the contemporary socio-ecological heritages and reconfigurations of mountain place names in the western Alps.

By combining a survey based on in situ observations and interviews with a cartographic and historical approach based on a corpus of archival material, this work will seek to analyze as closely as possible the onomastic processes (study of proper names) that accompany changes in environments and lifestyles.

This investigation will focus in particular on the way in which mountain populations appropriate or neglect, reinvest or reinvent toponyms relating to inherited landscapes, plants, animals and ways of life, while at the same time being part of the transitions at work today.