Claire Pelgrims
Pelgrims Claire (PhD) is an F.R.S. - FNRS Research Associate in Urbanism and Mobility studies at the Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium. Her research focuses on expanded understanding of mobility infrastructure and practices in relation to gender, aestheticism and functionality. "My research focuses on the significant social implications of current mobility system regulations aimed at limiting environmental risks. Cycling, promoted as an inclusive and healthy form of transport, is often not used by those who would benefit most from it. Studies on cycling disparities assume that social categories of gender, class and race are fixed, neglecting the processes of identity construction and the role of the material, sensory and emotional dimensions of infrastructure and equipment. My research aims to integrate a dynamic understanding of these identities into research on inequalities related to cycling. It focuses on the techniques of the body and the objects involved in everyday gender performances, particularly in the field of active mobility and micro-mobility (cycling, walking, scooters). My current research focuses on the role of aesthetic experience in the processes of identity construction and the desirability of cycling."
She has been the PI, within Sasha, in the FNRS research project (PDR) « Gender and Bicycling Aesthetics: the potential for the sustainable city of gender construction processes across cycling practices, equipment and infrastructure » (2021-2025). Claire has been a Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoctoral research fellow at Université Gustave Eiffel within LVMT research centre on a related project (SENCyclo, 2022-2023) implementing an international comparison of cycling practices, equipment and infrastructure in four cities in France and Switzerland.
Her PhD thesis focused on imaginaries of fast and slow mobilities in the evolution of Brussels mobility infrastructure since the middle of the 20th century. She has also been involved in research projects on Brussels metropolitan cultural and mobility infrastructures (18th-21st century) (micm-ARC) and on sustainable transition of company mobility (BSI chair). Associate researcher at the Institute of City and Arts, Waseda University (2023), at the Observatoire du Vélo et des Mobilités Actives, UNILausanne (2022) and at Laboratory on Urban Sociology, EPFL (2017-20), she has joined T2M Executive Committee in 2019 and is involved as member in the French ‘Passé, present mobilité’ [P2M] network and in the International Ambiances Network.
contact: claire.pelgrims@ulb.be
publication list: https://difusion.ulb.ac.be/vufind/Search/Home?lookfor=Claire+Pelgrim&sort=pubdate+desc&submitButton=Recherche&type=general