Marielle Macé

Born in Paimboeuf (France) in 1973, Marielle Macé is a researcher and writer.

Research Director at the CNRS and Director of Studies at EHESS (Paris), Marielle Macé is also a guest lecturer in Chicago, New York (NYU) and Berkeley, and was associate author at the Théâtre des Amandiers.

Her books (essays and poems) make use of literature to give thought to and discuss different forms of life – social life, community life, precarious lives and vulnerable landscapes. Her published works include Styles. Critique de nos formes de vie (Styles. A Critique of our Forms of Life – Gallimard, 2016), “Nous” (Us) (ed., Critique, 2017), Sidérer, considérer. Migrants en France (Bewilder, Consider. Migrants in France – Verdier, 2017), “Vivre dans un monde abîmé” (Living in a Damaged World) (ed., Critique, 2019), Nos cabanes (Our Cabins – Verdier, 2019), and Parole et pollution (Words and Pollution – AOC, 2021).

The investigative writing project she is working on at Villa Medici is entitled La Vie poreuse (Porous Life) and is set to take the pulse of Rome’s river and the lives involved in it: observing what happens when you defend wetlands, when you reopen city rivers, when you try to make surfaces permeable again or dig up buried memories, drawing on thought and writings on the phenomena of infiltration, liaison and percolation — for porous life demands to be heard, attention that will irrigate it in its turn and water landscapes for the common good.