Sébastien Grappe is a PhD candidate in History at Inria (France’s National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology) and ENS Lyon, at IXXI, its Complex Systems Institute. His research focuses on the historical relationship between information systems and the tangible activities they are used to orchestrate in the agricultural economy. He explores how the evolution of these systems has shaped tangible agricultural practices and markets. These systems comprise the technologies, the information flows, the very organizations that manage them, and the market actors, who have access to specific information.
This historical perspective informs his core research on the present day. He investigates how modern digital technologies, especially digital platforms, are fundamentally transforming data production and use in agriculture. A key aspect of this transformation is the “disembedding” of information from tangible farming activities. This disembedding creates the potential for novel markets, such as by connecting farming to new spheres like ecosystem management and public health by converting agricultural externalities into data. However, this process also raises critical challenges. By enabling the orchestration of markets from distant jurisdictions, these contemporary systems pose new threats to data and food sovereignty.
His thesis aims to provide the historical and critical knowledge needed to navigate these transformations, informing the development of future agricultural platforms that foster sustainable practices. His research is funded by the PEPR “Agroecology and Digital Technology” program, part of France’s “France 2030” investment plan and is labeled by the #Digitag convergence institut. His previous research focused on the comparative study of future narratives in France and Germany.