As a sociologist, I aspire to provide students with rigorous and critical tools to understand - and why not change - the social world in which we live.ClaroNewsMona CLARO, Associate Professor in the field of Gender and Sociological Theory. Picture: @MichelHouet

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efore joining the University of Liège, Mona Claro studied and then worked mainly in Paris, with detours to Marseille and especially Moscow, where she made several long study and research stays. After a master's degree in sociology with a specialization in "Gender, Politics and Sexuality" at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), she completed a PhD in sociology, under the co-directorship of Michel Bozon and Juliette Rennes, being attached to both EHESS and the Institut National d'Etudes Démographiques (INED). "I wanted to do a thesis on Russia after studying the language for almost ten years. In particular, I wanted to understand how the end of communism had disrupted the family, sexual and love lives of Russians. I chose to study the transition to adulthood paths of two generations of women, focusing on those of men as a counterpoint, and working mainly with biographical interviews - articulated with work on the history of public policies, and on press archives. In contrast to the previous generation, women of the "first post-Soviet generation", born in the 1980s and 1990s, massively use "modern" contraception during their youth, and become mothers later. They enjoy unprecedented room for manoeuvre, and at the same time, they were caught up in unequal gender relations, and in major material constraints in the fields of employment, housing and early childhood care, given the decline of the welfare state. It is this tension that I explored in my thesis." At the same time, Mona Claro teaches at the EHESS (in master's degrees in Paris and Marseille), and co-founds an interdisciplinary research collective, the "Junior Contraception and Gender Lab". She is currently pursuing her research on the subject of contraception and abortion, without limiting herself to the Russian context. "I am working on international comparisons, and I am preparing a new survey on Belgium."

Teaching feeds research, and vice versa

"As a sociologist, I aspire to provide students with rigorous and critical tools to understand - and why not change - the social world in which we live. Of course, our teachings are nourished by our research. For my part, this is particularly evident in the gender courses I am involved in (at the Faculty of Social Sciences and in the inter-university master's degree in gender studies), but it also applies to the other courses: whether in "political sociology" or "family sociology", for example, this gender dimension will be very present, because I am convinced that it is just as important as that of the social class, and too often neglected. And conversely, our teachings, the readings they imply, the questions they ask us, feed and stimulate our research. There is a pedagogical system that I have already practiced in different ways, which is very close to my heart, and which can allow fertile connections between teaching and research: the field survey conducted with students, so that learning is achieved through practice. This year, in my "Seminar of Political Sociology" (master's degree), we will do a little ethnographic observation work in political meetings or gatherings. "

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Mona CLARO

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