2026-05-19 - ✨Spotlight on : INRAE’s Directorate for collective scientific assessment, foresight and advanced studies (DEPE) (France)

We are delighted to introduce you to DEPE, in which two of our members are involved: Lise Paresys and Océane Espin. They have kindly agreed to give us a presentation:

Dear CopSyS Community,

We are Lise Paresys and Océane Espin, both agronomists engaged at the science-policy interface at INRAE’s Directorate for collective scientific assessment, foresight and advanced studies (DEPE).

The DEPE informs public policy, feeds the societal debate, and identifies research gaps on complex issues related to agriculture, food and the environment. It sets up ad hoc committees of experts and coordinates collective scientific assessments (CSAs), foresight and advanced studies, commissioned by public authorities or by INRAE itself.

Lise coordinates CSAs and advanced studies, and Océane is involved in foresight studies. CSAs are multidisciplinary and critical analyses that identify consensual, controversial, uncertain and missing knowledge in the academic literature. Advanced studies address more targeted issues than CSAs but involve additional data processing and analyses. Foresight studies explore possible futures. They draw on academic and stakeholders’ knowledge to formulate evolutionary hypotheses and scenarios over the next few decades.

The DEPE shall comply with the French National Charter for Expertise and follow principles of competence, plurality of disciplines and approaches, impartiality and transparency. We thus implement and develop methods to meet these requirements, questioning both the system within which we operate, and the system that we study in our projects.

We seek to explore and strengthen methods for interdisciplinary analysis and stakeholder engagement, and look forward to contributing to a collaborative learning community.

You can find out more about DEPE by visiting the following pages:
DEPE website
Completed CSAs, advanced studies, foresight studies
Guidelines for conducting CSAs and advanced studies
Guidelines for conducting foresight studies (French version only)