Sophie Lemière
Political Scientist · Filmmaker · Psychoanalyst
I am a political scientist specialising in Malaysia and Southeast Asia. Combining comparative politics with long-term ethnographic fieldwork, I have worked for more than twenty years on political elites and strongmen, political Islam, organised crime and political violence. Alongside my research, I have advised political leaders, international organisations and law firms, and I prepare expert reports for legal proceedings. I am an Associate Researcher at the Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique (FRS) and the Collège de France.
Born in France with Romanian roots, I have lived and worked across Asia, North America, Australia and Africa. My work connects politics, the arts and the human mind: I also write and direct documentary films and practise psychoanalysis.
Photo by: Alexandra Radu @2021
The Threads that Connect My Work
My work across research, filmmaking and psychoanalysis converges on the same questions: how power works, and how individuals and communities live with constraint, trauma and transformation. I explore them through long-term fieldwork with political actors, through documentary storytelling, and through listening to the unconscious in analytical sessions.
Expertise and Interest
- Political Power: Strongmen, personality politics, legitimacy, and the construction of political narratives
- Politics & Religion: Religious identity, civil society, political violence, and identity politics
- Society & Rights: Orphans’ rights, women, children and minority rights, and the protection of vulnerable populations
- Violence & Trauma: Institutional, societal, and intra-familial violence, particularly against women and children
- Neurodiversity & the Mind: The unconscious, neurodivergent experiences, and psychological resilience
Approaches
Comparative Politics • Political Anthropology • Ethnography • Sociology • Psychoanalysis • Filmmaking