Dr Bivar’s first book, Organic Resistance: The Struggle Over Industrial Farming in Postwar France, traces the transformation of the French agricultural sector from a backward also-ran into a global powerhouse, a process driven by modernising state policies in the wake of the Second World War that upended rural labour systems and the nation’s physical environment. Her current projects “Falling for Growth” and “Unsafe Harbour” examine the influence of economic thought on anthropogenic climate change and analyse the history of industrial pollution and port development in modern Marseille.