About “Virginie Fernandez”

Virginie is an Senior Lecturer in Management. Interested in collective action in risky and emergency contexts, her current projects deal with sensemaking, embodiment and temporality.
My research interests are in the continuity of my PhD thesis titled “Emergence of collective competence in extreme contexts. The case of French mountain rescue teams”.
My work tends to explore collective competence and extreme contexts in three main directions. The first one relates to collective sensemaking and how individuals and team members make sense of both their body and emotions to tackle issues raised in risky and emergency contexts. The second adopts a practiced-based view and intends to “rehabilitate” improvisation as a major practice rather than a “plan B” that sometimes needs to be hidden. Finally, I explore temporality in extreme contexts acknowledging the juxtaposition of several forms of time in organizations.
I use qualitative methods (interviews, participating observation, fieldwork) and adopt various theoretical perspective (practice-based studies, sensemaking, strong processual approach) to contribute to the development of the research fields I am invested in.