DAMIEN Romain

Thesis

• Title: "Representing the Palestinian cause internationally (1964-2018). De la prétention à représenter à la professionnalisation des diplomates palestiniens", defended on 5 January 2023 at Sciences Po Aix, under the supervision of Philippe Aldrin and Aude Signoles.
• Members of the jury: Pénélope Larzillière (reporter), Aude Merlin (reporter), Delphine Placidi-Frot (chair), Virginie Dutoya (examiner), Bernard Botiveau (examiner)
• Abstract: This thesis focuses on the professionalization of Palestinian diplomats and examines the 'genesis' and subsequent stateization of Palestinian diplomacy since the creation of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1964. Based on a socio-historical approach to these actors, we sought to understand the conditions under which a diplomacy with a state vocation emerged, i.e. a diplomacy that sought to negotiate with states, but that grew out of a national liberation movement, partially recognised and evolving outside official institutions. Our research has thus led us to move away from a definition of diplomacy restricted to the inter-state and institutional framework, and to look at issues arising from political representation. We interpret the origins of diplomacy as the internationalisation of a claim to political representation of the Palestinians, performed internationally by diplomats who do not bear the name. With the gradual recognition of the PLO, which led to the peace agreements with Israel in 1993 and then to the establishment of a Palestinian National Authority in the Occupied Territories, this claim became that of State diplomacy. This new configuration encouraged the professionalisation of the Palestinian diplomatic corps, with the creation of a ministry and mechanisms for training new diplomats. The result was a new division of labour between the PLO and the Authority, which created new tensions around the claim to represent the Palestinians politically. Our work thus lies at the crossroads of the sociology of international relations, political representation and the professions, and articulates several scales of analysis: international, institutional and microsociological.
• Keywords: diplomacy, political representation, professionalisation, Palestine, statehood

Articles submitted to peer review committees

• Romain Damien, "Palestinian diplomats: an elite on the fringes of the Palestinian national movement", SociologyS [Online], Dossiers, Les élites par leurs marges : (im)peréabilité et performativité des frontières sociales, online 28 February 2020, URL : http://journals.openedition.org/sociologies/12951
• Romain Damien, "Representing a 'terrorist organisation' in Europe: the case of the PLO (1967-1974)", Maghreb - Mashrek2019/4 (No. 242), pp. 5-17.

Project reports

• Romain Damien, "BONTEMPS Véronique et al, 2020, Thinking Palestine in networks", Review of Muslim Worlds and the Mediterranean [On line], 150 | December 2021, on-line since 01 June 2021. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/remmm/15458
• Romain Damien " LATTE Abdallah, Stéphanie ; PARIZOT, Cédric (dir.), Israël/Palestine, l'illusion de la séparation, Presses Universitaires de Provence, coll. Sociétés contemporaines, Aix-en-Provence, 2017 ", Review of Muslim Worlds and the Mediterranean [online], online since 28 June 2018. URL : https://journals.openedition.org/remmm/10352

Teaching

• International relations
• European policy
• Sociology of globalisation
• Survey methods
• Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• Regimes and societies in the Arab world
• Introduction to political science

Sociology of international relations: sociogenesis of diplomacy; internationalisation; foreign policy

Sociology of professions: professionalisation; social division of labour; sociology of professional groups

Sociology of political representation: claim to represent; performance; sociology of political and diplomatic representatives

Sociology of elites and administrations: senior civil servants; state control; the creation of ministries

Scientific events

• 01/2016 - 03/2017: Member of the "Behind the scenes of the thesis" seminar team, CHERPA, Aix-en-Provence
• 07/2017-12/2017: member of the "Itinéraire de Recherche" seminar team, CHERPA, Aix-en-Provence
• 07/2017-11/2023: member of thematic section 42 of the French Sociology Association
• 19/01/2018: "De facto states and other "anomalies" in the international system: what place for recognition?", Study day, Romain Damien, Théotime Chabre, Sophie Gueudet, CHERPA, Aix-en-Provence.
• 01/2018-09/2020: member of the coordination team for the CHERPA general seminar