Lauren Bastide

Lauren Bastide (born 1980 in France), a writer, journalist, and producer, is the author of three best-selling essays that explore the place of women and feminist thought in the public sphere (Présentes, 2020, Allary), the realm of thought (Futur·es, 2022, Allary), and the domestic sphere (Enfin Seule, 2025, Allary). She is a graduate of the Strasbourg Institute of Political Science (2003), the Paris Center for Journalism Training (2005), a Master’s degree in gender studies (Paris 8, 2018), and a bachelor’s degree in psychology (Paris 8, 2025). She created the podcasts *La Poudre* (25 million downloads) and *Folie Douce*, launched in 2023, which explores mental health through the lens of gender.

Her residency project is a feminist history of walls—those we build and tear down, those that demarcate space along gendered and racial lines, those we raze and push against, and those on which we write. In this essay, she will also explore her personal relationship to walls, as a city girl and the granddaughter of shopkeepers. Walls will be considered as borders, as archives, as traces, but also as spaces for social struggle and advocacy. She will draw on history, sociology, urban planning, and archaeology—as well as literature and art—to weave together this text, which, like her previous essays, will blend the personal and the political.