Team & Partners

Amandine Hertzog-Adamczewski is a geographer and researcher at the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (CIRAD), within the UMR G-EAU research unit. Her work focuses primarily on land tenure issues and irrigation in West Africa, particularly in Mali and Senegal. Her research addresses land governance, social justice in irrigation projects, conflicts over access to land, and land-related migration dynamics.

Monique Bertrand is Research Director at IRD (French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development), UMR CESSMA, and the Principal Investigator of the METROLAND project. Her research lies at the intersection of urban geography and African studies, focusing primarily on West Africa. For the past twenty years, her work has centered on the changing contours of urban societies, their mobility, and their roots in metropolitan peripheries facing land commodification.

Bérénice Bon is a researcher in urban studies at the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD). She is based in Nairobi, Kenya and affiliated with the UMR SENS research unit. Her initial research in India examined infrastructure developments—such as metro systems, transport corridors, and industrial parks—and their impact on urban marginalisation, real estate market reconfigurations, and changes in land use on the urban fringes.

Fatoumata Camara is an Associate Professor at the University of Social Sciences and Management of Bamako (USSGB), Faculty of History and Geography. Her teaching and research focus on land issues, urban, peri-urban and rural dynamics, land access and gender, natural resource governance, land conflicts, and housing and social policies. She has over fifteen years of experience in research on land tenure and territorial change in Mali.

Cathy Chatel is a Research Engineer in Geography at Université Paris Cité, affiliated with CESSMA and Geoteca, and holds a PhD in Geography. Her research focuses on long-term population, settlement, and urbanization dynamics. Through the development of statistical and GIS databases on changes in the spatial distribution of populations, she has examined processes of urban expansion and the dispersion of settlement patterns in various regions of the world.

Armelle Choplin is Professor of Geography and Urban Planning at the University of Geneva (Switzerland). Her research focuses on how cities are produced, planned and experienced in the Global South, particularly in Africa and the Arab world. Her recent work explores the political economy of concrete and the social and environmental impacts of the construction boom in Africa.

Momar Diongue is a Professor in the Department of Geography at Cheikh Anta Diop University (UCAD) in Dakar, Senegal. His research focuses on cities, peri-urbanization, metropolitan development, land tenure, mobility, urban governance, housing, and urban projects. He is also the Director of the Institute of Territorial Governance and Local Development at UCAD.

Rodrigue Houessè conducted his doctoral research on the trajectories of territories in northern Benin in response to socio-environmental changes, as well as the factors driving land-use dynamics since the 1970s. Between 2023 and 2025, he worked as a Research Engineer in spatial analysis at IRD, where he analyzed urbanization dynamics in Dakar, Bamako, and Nairobi using remote sensing tools.

Carol Kiarie is a Research and GIS Specialist with over ten years of experience in geospatial analysis and climate-resilient development in East Africa. She works at the intersection of spatial data, urban planning, and environmental management, producing data-driven insights for policy and decision-making. Her expertise includes spatio-temporal analysis of land use and vegetation, urban expansion modelling, and the integration of environmental and health indicators.

Hannah Kinuthia is a lecturer at Kirinyaga University. A specialist in environmental planning, GIS, and remote sensing, she studies land dynamics and rapid urbanization in the outskirts of Nairobi. She holds a PhD in Environmental Planning and Management (Kenyatta University, 2022), an MSc in the same field (2014), and a Bachelor's degree in Landscape Architecture (JKUAT, 2010).

Mamadou Kouma holds a PhD in Geography and is an Associate Professor at the University of Social Sciences and Management of Bamako (USSGB). His research focuses on social and territorial dynamics in and around the district of Bamako, with particular attention to land conflicts, social mobilizations, decentralization and municipal governance, as well as processes of urban expansion and planning.

Philippe Lavigne Delville is a socio-anthropologist and Research Director at the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD), affiliated with the UMR SENS. At the intersection of development anthropology and the political sociology of public action, his current research focuses on land policies and land-related interventions in rural West Africa (notably Benin and Senegal).

Lahat Serigne Ndiaye defended his PhD in 2025 in socio-anthropology on the topic “Urban Expansion, Socio-Familial Trajectories, and Spatial Justice Issues in the Bambilor Area (Niayes, South of Dakar, Senegal).” He was a doctoral researcher at IRD within UMR SENS, under the supervision of Philippe Lavigne Delville and Sylvain Landry Faye. His research focuses on land transactions, residential mobility, land-use change, and conflicts in the peri-urban areas of Dakar.

Claire Simonneau is an associate professor at Université Gustave Eiffel and a researcher at LATTS. Her work focuses on the production and governance of cities in the Global South, with particular attention to land appropriation practices and regulatory frameworks. Based on empirical research in West Africa, her current projects examine land transformations in urban fringes, notably in Benin and the Dakar region.