Virginie Tournay

A biologist by training, Virginie Tournay is also a political scientist and Director of Research at the CNRS – French National Centre for Scientific Research, based at the CEVIPOF – Centre for Political Science Research of Sciences Po, Paris. Her research interests include biotechnology, epistemology, and opinion polls. In 2011, Tournay was awarded the bronze medal by the CNRS for her work in the field of the sociology of institutions. In addition to her academic duties, Tournay is also a science fiction author: her novel Civilisation 0.0 (Glyphe, 2019) describes a hyperconnected society in 2062 that has to deal with a computer bug. What would be left if all our technical prostheses stopped working? This speculative fiction explores how our moral values depend on the technological infrastructure of society. She also questions our relationship to reality in the philosophical tale S’il te plait, dessine-moi une institution (Glyphe, 2012), which is an imaginary conversation between a sociologist and a theoretical physicist about the perception and consistency of institutions. She is a member of the Red Team, a team set up at Université Paris Sciences et Lettres by the Defence Innovation Agency in order to imagine future military threats that could endanger France and its interests.