Post doctoral scientist: doctor Baptiste SALMON

Baptiste Salmon is a social scientist working on climate change, territorial adaptation and the existential dimensions of environmental change. He completed his PhD at Université Paris-Saclay in 2025, within CEARC, under the supervision of Yorghos Remvikos and Charlotte da Cunha. His research was conducted in partnership with BL évolution, a consultancy cooperative specialising in ecological transition.

His doctoral research examined how place-attached communities experience profound environmental and social upheavals, and how climate change can become entangled with threats to the continuity of places and ways of life. He worked comparatively with three communities: Greenville, California, rebuilding after the 2021 Dixie Fire; Métabief, France, where the future of a ski-based economy is challenged by declining snow cover; and Fairbourne, Wales, where sea-level rise has led to proposals for the future decommissioning of the village.

Baptiste’s work focuses on loss - both material and immaterial - place attachment, sense-making and epistemic justice. He uses qualitative approaches including interviews, narrative analysis and life stories to understand how inhabitants interpret changes affecting the places they call home. His research also examines how top-down adaptation policies can interact with local understandings of place, sometimes creating forms of distrust or loss.

Baptiste has been a member of the PREFER project, where his research contributes to the project’s investigation of local terminal risks and their relationship to broader questions of existential risk. His work brings particular attention to the territorial and experiential dimensions of situations in which communities face the possible loss or radical transformation of the places and futures to which they are attached.