Lunch Conference : Restructuring the hydrosocial cycle in the Montpellier metropolitan area
Tue, May 12
|Adrien-Pouliot Pavilion - Room 3370
In-person event at Laval University, also available online. Presentation by Mathias Hervet, a Ph.D. student in geography at the University of Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3, on the restructuring of the hydrosocial cycle in metropolitan areas.
Time & Location
May 12, 2026, 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM
Adrien-Pouliot Pavilion - Room 3370, Adrien-Pouliot Pavilion, Quebec City, QC G1V 0A6, Canada
About the event
Presentation summary:
Mathias Hervet, a doctoral student in geography, will present his research on the restructuring of the hydrosocial cycle in the Montpellier metropolitan area.
This presentation will analyze, through the lens of the political ecology of water, how historical choices regarding water supply and governance have led to a chain of socio-technical and territorial dependencies, culminating in the recent connection to the Rhône River. Although the presentation will draw on the author’s doctoral research, it will address issues that are relevant to the Quebec context.
Guest Introduction:
Mathias Hervet is a Ph.D. candidate in geography at Paul Valéry University – Montpellier 3 (UMR ART-Dev), under the supervision of Stéphane Ghiotti (CNRS). His dissertation, scheduled to be defended in the first half of 2027, focuses on the reconfiguration of the territorialized water cycle in the Montpellier metropolitan area, France. Drawing on the frameworks of urban political ecology, the sociology of public action, and urban metabolism, this research analyzes, over a span of six decades (1965–2024), the institutional and infrastructural choices that have shaped the metropolitan hydrosocial territory, up to its recent reconfiguration, which has taken place in the context of climate change.
A qualified urban planner, he combines the roles of practitioner and researcher, drawing on fifteen years of professional experience working for government agencies and local authorities, where he focused on land-use planning, land-use strategies, and natural areas. He currently teaches geography at the undergraduate and graduate levels at a university and an engineering school, and serves as the doctoral student representative on his laboratory’s departmental council.
His work examines the political trade-offs that, at the metropolitan level, balance the need to sustain urban growth with the imperative to conserve water resources, as well as their territorial impacts. He is specifically interested in socio-technical lock-in mechanisms, the scalar production of resources, and the depoliticization of planning decisions through their juridification.