Gabriel is a postdoctoral researcher funded by the Trust in Science Project at Harvard University (directed by Sheila Jasanoff), co-affiliated with the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies Potsdam (Germany). His research project is entitled “Bodies of Suspicion: Distrust in Science – Online and Beyond”. He holds a PhD in philosophy and environmental humanities (University Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne & University of Lausanne).

Summary of his research project:

This project uses ethnographic methods to engage and better understand online communities who are creating, spreading, sharing, and commenting on information that is not officially sanctioned. While these communities are often charged with contributing to the growing loss of trust in science and presenting a danger for public health, climate policy, and ultimately for democracy, little interest has been paid to their real motivations and to how they make sense of ongoing crises. This project focuses on two fields of crucial significance for public policy: public health (more precisely COVID-19 vaccines) and climate change (specifically solar geoengineering and, by extension, global warming) and questions the complex production, filtering, and sanctioning of what gets to count as information or misinformation and for whom. It also asks how does online information get entangled with tangible practices such as diet, complementary and alternative medicine, or socializing habits?

His previous positions were: Postdoctoral Fellow with Harvard STS and the IASS, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) in 2020-2021; Postdoctoral researcher and teacher at Lille Catholic University (ETHICS, Chair Ethics & Transhumanism) in 2019-2020; Visiting Research Fellow with Harvard STS funded by the SNF in 2014-15, and invited Research Fellow at the IASS for two 4-month stays in 2016-2017 and 2018.

Gabriel has long been deeply involved in the dialogue between science and society through his participation in various initiatives, such as the Interface Science-Society of the University of Lausanne, the francophone festival of philosophy in Switzerland, the Vaud Philosophy Society, and Projet Socrate, which looks at what philosophy can bring to work organizations to make them more responsive and responsible in today’s world.

Academia profile:

https://harvard.academia.edu/GabrielDorthe