Simon Lafontaine is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Sociology, University of British Columbia. He graduated with a PhD in Political and Social Sciences from the University of Brussels. His work evolves around the phenomenological and constructivist traditions in the social sciences, and the development of descriptions and concepts to flesh out the actor’s experience of the social world, whose doing and feeling lies at the base of the whole system.

His dissertation advances an approach to everyday mobility as part of a theory of creative action through description and interpretation of different types of embodied movements in space and time. By revisiting Alfred Schutz’s social phenomenology, Simon’s dissertation examines the living dynamics involved in choosing a line of action, gearing into the world, concerting with others, and projecting forward in the future, sometimes moving beyond familiar boundaries to cope with the unexpected challenges that confront us.

During his graduate studies at UQAM, Simon conducted research on art intervention. His MA thesis attempted to uncover the experience of the new and unexpected in everyday life by focusing on the site-specific performative installations Hypothèses d’amarrages from SYN collective, and by examining their traces in the urban spaces of Montreal and the urbanistic discourse.

Simon’s current research examines scenes of loneliness in Vancouver and common assumptions surrounding interconnectedness and solitary withdrawal in social networks. His contribution aims at interpreting the meanings that people attach to their lonely behaviours, and at uncovering what type of self-relation and interpersonal relation they involve. These findings lend themselves to a phenomenological and pragmatic analysis of the thresholds of the social self through which being loses or discovers itself as being-two-in-one and as leading the internal conversation that marks human reflexivity and the pursuit of commitments and projects. The proposed research thus contribute to overcome the reduction of being alone to a painful state or a mere planned retreat by developing a comprehensive account of both its imposed and voluntary forms.

Simon is also a French translator of English, Spanish and German sociological texts.

Research interests: mobility and migration, knowledge and affects, individuality and identity, social phenomenology and the sociology of knowledge, action theory, classical and contemporary sociological theory, qualitative methods, and the sociology of culture.

1. Lafontaine, S. ‘Ideal Potentials in Action: Schutzian Affinities in Simmel’s View of Life’. Simmel Studies, 2021 (forthcoming).
2. Lafontaine, S. ‘Anxiety and the Refiguration of Human Action: Living in a Crisis-Shaped Present’. In D. A. Vakoch et S. Mickey (eds.), Eco-Anxiety and Planetary Hope: Psychology of Pandemics and the Climate Crisis, Springer (book chapter, forthcoming)
3. Lafontaine, S. ‘The Significance of Mobility in Alfred Schutz’s Theory of Action’, Human Studies, 2020. DOI: 10.1007/s10746-020-09563-2
4. Lafontaine, S. ‘Sur l’expérience de l’attente pour atteindre le sommet de la pyramide du Soleil [On the Experience of Waiting to Reach the Top of the Pyramid of the Sun]’, Siggi. Le magazine de sociologie, 2020, p. 68-75.
5. Lafontaine, S. ‘Quid de l’habitus ? Réflexions en compagnie de Pierre Bourdieu et d’Edmund Husserl [What About Habitus? Reflections with Pierre Bourdieu and Edmund Husserl]’, Revue de l’Institut de Sociologie, 2019. https://journals.openedition.org/ris/401
6. Lafontaine, S. ‘L’étrangeté du familier. Pour un renouvellement de la théorie du monde social d’Alfred Schutz [The Strangeness in the Familiar: For a Renewal of Alfred Schutz’s Theory of the Social World]’, Nouvelles perspectives en sciences sociales, 2018. DOI: 10.7202/1051114ar
7. Book review : Lafontaine, S. La phénoménologie à l’épreuve des sciences humaines (B. Frère et S. Laoureux (eds.), Bruxelles, P.I.E. Lang, 2013), Bulletin d’analyse phénoménologique, 2018.
8. Book review : Lafontaine, S. La théorie sociale de G. H. Mead.Études critiques et traductions inédites (A. Cukier et É. Debray (eds.), Lormont, Le Bord de l’eau, 2014), Émulations, 2015. http://www.revue-emulations.net/lectures-critiques/lecture/cukierdebray.
9. Jacob, L. and Lafontaine, S. ‘Les sédimentations du paysage urbain’. In W. Straw, A. Guérin et A. Bélanger (eds.), Formes urbaines : circulation, stockage et transmission de l’expression culturelle à Montréal, Montréal, Esse, 2014.
10. Lafontaine, S. ‘Quand l’urbanité joue l’informel : l’intervention artistique aux confins du paysage urbain [When Urbanity Plays with Informality: Artistic Intervention on the Edges of Urban Landscape]”, Revista Márgenes : Espacio Arte Sociedad, 2013. DOI: 10.22370/margenes.2013.10.12.358
11. Book review : Lafontaine, S. Georg Simmel et les sciences de la culture (A. Deneault et J.-F. Côté (eds.), Québec, Presses de l’Université Laval, 2009), Anthropologie et sociétés, 2012.
12. Lafontaine, S. ‘L’artiste au Miroir : projection de soi, fiction et phénoménalité sociohistorique dans Prenez soin de vous de Sophie Calle [The Artist in the Mirror: Self-projection, Fiction and Socio-historical Phenomenality in Take Care of Yourself by Sophie Calle]”, Réel-Virtuel : enjeux du numérique. 2011 http://www.reel-virtuel.com/numeros/numero2/alienation-ou-invention-de-soi/artiste-au-miroir>.

Work under review:

Lafontaine, S. ‘Adventure in the Social World: Simmel’s Appeal to Creative Action’, Journal of Classical Sociology.

Work in progress:

Lafontaine, S. ‘Loneliness/Solitude in the Social Sciences and Humanities: Challenges for Creative Action in Times of Global Disruption?’ (book chapter).

Lafontaine, S. ‘Bodies, Affects and Orientations in Action: A Phenomenological Approach to Everyday (Im)mobilities and Migration in Urban Space’, Mobilities.

Lafontaine, S. ‘On Familiarity, Strangeness, and Vacancies in Knowledge: A Schutzian Contribution to the Phenomenology of Crisis and Reflection’, Schutzian Research.

• 2021 Seal of Excellence, European Commission, Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions in Horizon 2020
• 2021 one-year Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, Disorientation in the Covid-19 crisis (AAP RA-COVID-19) research project, Agence nationale de recherche (France), CNRS-EHESS-ENS, finalist (2^nd)
• 2018 Mobility Grant, Scientific Research Funds of Belgium (FRS‑FNRS)
• 2014-2018, Doctoral Research Fellowship, Scientific Research Funds of Belgium (FRS-FNRS), University of Brussels
• 2014 Doctoral scholarship, Imagination and Life-World research project, Dr. Nathalie Zaccaï-Reyners, Scientific Research Funds of Belgium (FRS-FNRS), University of Brussels
• 2012 Research Grant, Media and Urban Life in Montreal research project, Fonds de Recherche du Québec Société et Culture (FRQSC), McGill University and UQAM
• 2011-2012 Excellence Scholarship, Fonds à l’accessibilité et à la réussite des études, UQAM
• 2011 Research Grant, Media and Urban Life in Montreal research project, Fonds de Recherche du Québec Société et Culture (FRQSC), McGill University and UQAM
• 2010-2011 Master’s Scholarship, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), UQAM
• 2009-2010, Excellence Scholarship, Fonds à l’accessibilité et à la réussite des études, UQAM.