Team > Scientific Leaders

Muriel Epstein

Muriel Epstein is agrégée in mathematics,  a teacher in secondary school and university, a doctor of sociology and a researcher. In 2011, she completed her PhD thesis on the educational pathways of 16-to-25 year-olds. She is a graduate of ENSAE ParisTech (Paris Graduate School of Economics, Statistics and Finance) and worked as a consultant for 10 years, in particular to accompany the implementation of observatories for employment-training of professional branches and the evaluation of educational policies. This triple-fold expertise led her to create Transapi, an innovation project to fight against school dropout and in favor of an inclusive school, that lasted 2 years and is still documented on the website www.transapi.fr.

Her background in statistics makes her especially sensitive to the possibilities open by data analysis in training.Enthusiastic about the idea of contributing to a more egalitarian, more emancipating education, that allows every individual to feel happy, thrive, reach their potential, and that allows the community to live and work together, she participates in many projects and associations around these topics. She is close to the FESPI (Federation of Innovative Public Schools), to the GFEN (French Group for Progressive Education). She follows the emerging movements around cooperative learning and is involved in what digital tools can allow (in particular, MOOCs).Research-wise, she takes part in the activities of the Center for Research and Interdisciplinarity on innovation in education and in those of the team “Crise, école, terrains sensibles” (crisis, school, sensitive fields) of Nanterre University, among other things.

At the Lab School Network, she is involved in the organization of an international conference and in the implementation of the AERE platform, allowing educational projects to be accompanied and documented by researchers, and researchers to find a research field. In accordance with the LSN’s spirit of openness and demanding standards,  she also lets her curiosity take her to different research groups that interest her (in particular the place of the body in learning and the scalability of experimentations).

Pascale Haag

After studying baroque oboe, recorder and harpsichord at the music conservatories of Strasbourg and the Hague, Pascale was a professional musician for roughly ten years, playing concerts and recording with various groups including Les Arts florissants, Les Musiciens du Louvre and Le Parlement de musique. She also taught music until 1998 while pursuing her education at university in Paris, where she studied Sanskrit grammar. She completed a PhD in Indian Studies in 2002 and was appointed to the EHESS in 2003. Her research focused mainly on the philosophy of language and on the history of Indian linguistic theories until 2011. In addition, she studied psychology at the University of Paris Nanterre, where she earned an M.A. in Psychology in 2013. She is currently working on a PhD in Psychology on the predictors of well-being and psychological distress among doctoral students. Moreover she is in charge of student life at the EHESS and secretary of the Association française et francophone de psychologie positive.

Pascale has been immersed in Freinet’s pedagogy since childhood. Her elementary school teacher parents were interested in implementing alternative learning methods in the suburban housing estates of Strasbourg in the seventies. Pascale’s own 7 year old son is currently enrolled in a Montessori school.