The 2025 academic year sees the ranks of the Chair in Comparative Public Law and Politics expand with the arrival of Mr Lucien Carrier, winner of the postdoctoral position advertised in last September’s competition.
A new postdoctoral fellow affiliated with the Chair
The Chair of Comparative Public Law and Politics is pleased to welcome, since October 2025, Mr Lucien Carrier, Doctor of Public Law from the University of Bordeaux and McGill University (joint PhD). His dissertation, Naming the United Kingdom: The Classification of Political Forms through the Lens of British, French, and Canadian Scholarly Traditions, supervised by Professors Marie-Claire Ponthoreau (University of Bordeaux) and Johanne Poirier (McGill University), offers a comparative reappraisal of classificatory practices based on their respective legal traditions.
Prior to his doctorate, Lucien Carrier completed a degree in French and English law at the University of Bordeaux, an English law certification at the University of Birmingham, an LLM in Public International Law at the University of Glasgow, and a Master’s degree in Fundamental Public Law at the University of Bordeaux. With a trajectory firmly oriented towards comparative law, built from the outset at the crossroads of several legal traditions and shaped by a bilingual and international training, he now continues along this path in his work within the Chair. Over the course of his studies, he received the prize for most outstanding student in 2015 as well as several merit-based scholarships, including a fully funded doctoral contract.
As a postdoctoral researcher attached to the Chair, Lucien Carrier develops work at the intersection of comparative law, constitutional theory, and legal anthropology. His current research focuses on the manner in which doctrinal rationalisation operates across constitutional systems, and in particular how ideas flow from one legal tradition to another. He is currently especially interested in disciplinary law and civil services from a comparative perspective (France, Denmark, and the United Kingdom). His work fully aligns with the Chair’s research themes, notably the comparative study of British public law and the contemporary transformations of liberal democracies.
He also contributes to several collective projects led by the Chair: the development of digital resources in comparative public law; the translation of a database of landmark decisions of British, US, and Canadian courts (with Indian case law soon to be added in both French and English); and participation in the activities of the Observatoire du Brexit – Groupe de recherche sur le Royaume-Uni et l’Union européenne post-Brexit.
In parallel, Lucien Carrier has taught public law and comparative law in both French and English. His lectures include constitutional law, administrative law, and introduction to legal studies.
His approach is resolutely multidisciplinary, and brings together comparative and historical methods, as well as some elements of the sociology of law. In continuity with his doctoral work, he aims to further develop a broader reflection on how scholarly practices shape – and often constrain – our understanding of the law.
We are all delighted to welcome him and look forward to future collaboration.
