Xavier Bach is a geographer and researcher specializing in sustainable urban mobility. As an industrial PhD student, he completed an international stay at the Laboratoire Ville Mobilité Transport of the École des Ponts in Paris, one of the leading European institutions in transport planning. In this interview, he reflects on how that immersion (academic, methodological and human) has decisively marked his research and professional career.
In a recent article we explored their research; a project that maps shared micromobility in the Barcelona metropolitan area for the first time from an independent perspective. The results question the narrative of private operators and provide scientific criteria for designing more equitable public policies.
In this experience, however, we talk about his international stay during his industrial doctorate experience.
"I would recommend the stay to everyone. It opens your mind, you get to know other work environments and it gives you the autonomy to express yourself in front of others."
— What motivated you to undertake the international stay as part of your industrial doctorate?
— For most PhD students, being able to spend a period outside your usual environment is an incentive in itself. In my case, there was an additional factor: I was already working, and the stay was the opportunity to get to know another city. But also, since my PhD was very focused on urban studies —specifically on the shared motorbike system—, choosing Paris made clear sense. It is a pioneering city in sustainable mobility and fit directly with the central theme of my thesis. It was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.
— Where were you working and what was the atmosphere like at the center?
— The center where I stayed is the Laboratoire Ville Mobilité Transport, which is part of the École des Ponts de Paris, a very prestigious school. It was one of the decisive reasons for choosing Paris: the laboratory perfectly matched my concerns, both personal and professional, which were to link the academic dimension with the practical planning of sustainable mobility.
It was a laboratory of about twenty PhD students, each working on a different topic. Any of those topics would have interested me as my own thesis, and I didn’t find that in Barcelona. In addition, there were many industrial PhD students there who worked with the French equivalent system, the CIFRE grants, and I felt very supported. In the social sciences, this figure is very rare here, and there I suddenly found myself surrounded by references with whom I identified.
Since I was doing my PhD while combining it with work, I had never had a daily academic environment from Monday to Friday. I experienced it there for the first time. And, what’s more, it coincided with the post-pandemic moment, when everyone was returning to the lab with a great desire to share. The atmosphere was extraordinary.
— Is there any specific activity that you particularly remember from that period?
— Yes, without a doubt. The center organized the so-called doctoral studies: a three-day stay on the coast, outside Paris, where we met doctoral students from different years. Each one explained their research, we shared methodologies, we learned from each other. It was a very enriching immersion, both for the content and for the human experience.
— What was the central objective of the stay from a research point of view?
— In my case, the objective was not to have a very specific and closed collaboration, as can happen in other stays. My intention was to get to know another work environment and discover other methodologies. But, of course, the collaborations have ended up coming naturally, a posteriori. For example, in the Paris laboratory they were doing a master’s degree in Sustainable Mobility and, two years after my stay, they came to Barcelona and we organized an entire week for them as a subject for the master’s degree. And vice versa: PhD students from there have come to do two-month stays at our institute. It was not an immediate collaboration, but a lasting and bidirectional relationship has been generated.
— What was day-to-day life like in an international work environment?
— For me it was eye-opening. With the industrial doctorate, I wasn’t on a university campus every day, but at my job. So the stay was the first time I fully experienced how research is organized and structured, how it really works inside. Obviously, I had my research group here and we met weekly, but it’s not the same as being immersed in it every day.
It also gives you perspective. It allows you to see what is being researched in other parts of the world, on what topics, with what approaches. In the social sciences, when you start, sometimes you don’t know for sure if your topic is relevant enough. There I found that any aspect of sustainable mobility can be a solid and recognized doctoral thesis. You could think that you were researching something very particular and uninteresting; immersion confirms that it is, that it arouses the interest of others. Here, being a smaller research community, you don’t always find that recognition or that mirror.
— Is there any methodology or knowledge acquired in Paris that you have been able to transfer to your subsequent professional activity?
— Without a doubt. My thesis was very segmented in the methodologies that I had already planned, but through the exchange sessions, the poster presentations and the collective discussions, I came into contact with methodologies from other fields of sustainable mobility and urban planning that I was not familiar with. Now, in studies that we have done subsequently, we have applied some of them, both quantitative and qualitative: ways of structuring interviews, of approaching the objects of study, of formulating research questions. It has been a real and practical transfer.
— How has the stay influenced your way of understanding research?
— It has given me perspective and, above all, it has given me legitimacy. My research group here is very theoretical, but my concerns have always been towards much more applied research, in the sense that the results can be useful for public policies. In Paris I saw that this type of applied research is done, valued and recognized in Europe. This has helped me to have the conviction that everything we have been doing is of interest and is useful. When your immediate environment is very theoretical, sometimes you need that external confirmation.
— What has been the impact of the experience on a personal level?
— It was a time when everyone was returning to the lab after the pandemic, and there were many PhD students my age. It was, I don’t know whether to call it coincidence or luck, but we generated a very special complicity. I’ve been watching their thesis defenses, we’ve met in other European cities and we’re still in touch. And Paris, as a city, has stolen my heart forever. On a professional level, the network we generated has borne real fruit: collaborations, shared articles, reciprocal stays. And Paris is close by, which makes it very easy to stay in touch. Physical distance is not an obstacle.
— Would you recommend the international stay to other industrial PhD students who are thinking about it?
— To everyone, without a doubt. I was the first in the Department of Geography to do it, and now people see that it is possible, that it is accessible. In addition, the program’s scholarship already includes a specific part for the international stay. I recommend it because it opens your mind: you get to know other work environments, you gain autonomy, you learn to express yourself and defend your research in front of new audiences. It is an experience that transforms you, both as a researcher and as a person.
