Astrotourism and the Heritage-Making of the Starry Sky: Towards Sustainable Governance of Nocturnal Environments (Algeria – France)

In a context of ecological disruption and growing pressure on resources, the starry sky is emerging as an ecological, cultural and scientific resource, though still marginal in public policies. At the crossroads of sustainable tourism, scientific mediation, and territorial innovation, astrotourism offers a lens to explore this potential. As over 80% of the global population lives under an artificially lit sky (Falchi et al., 2016), rediscovering nocturnal environments provides both a symbolic reconnection with the cosmos and an opportunity for local development in peripheral regions.

Astrotourism territories are becoming laboratories for new models of sustainability based on light sobriety, landscape enhancement, and shared intangible heritage. Beyond tourism, this raises questions about the governance of celestial commons, the territorial production of meaning, and the civic appropriation of darkness. Such issues call for an interdisciplinary approach combining social, spatial, and environmental sciences.

This doctoral project proposes a comparative study between two contrasting contexts: the Saharan regions of Tassili n’Ajjer and Hoggar in Algeria—offering exceptional but underexploited astronomical conditions—and the Morvan Regional Natural Park in France, recently designated as an International Dark Sky Reserve. The aim is to understand how these territories can become laboratories of innovation for rethinking the night as a territorial infrastructure, an observational tool, and a vector of ecological and cultural transition.

The research will combine field surveys, ethnographic observations, interviews, and multi-scalar spatial analysis. Satellite data from Pléiades Neo, Sentinel-2, and VIIRS will support the development of a Nighttime Sustainability Index, integrating light pollution, landscape dynamics, and socio-economic indicators. These datasets will be analyzed through GIS to produce comparative maps of the sky and territorial trajectories.

The project aligns with the CNES Sustainability Roadmap (2024–2030), promoting links between satellite observation, ecological transition, and local development. It contributes to the Earth Observation and Environment Program, where nighttime light is seen as an indicator of human footprint, and builds on initiatives such as Calisph’Air, which use space data for education and awareness. Through this articulation of research, mediation, and territorial innovation, the project illustrates an integrated vision of space science serving society.

Its ambition rests on two main objectives:

1. To construct a comparative framework for the heritage-making of the starry sky, linking material dimensions (pollution, landscapes, observation) and immaterial ones (values, cosmologies, identities);

2. To design governance tools for nocturnal environments transferable to public policies, in collaboration with local authorities, CSR strategies, and CNES programs.

This approach responds to the CNES Directorate for Sustainable Development’s call to integrate the humanities and social sciences into sustainable space research (Monnoyer-Smith, CNES, 2024).

At the interface between social sciences and space studies, this PhD explores the foundations of an ethics of sustainable space, linking the protection of terrestrial sky to a responsible management of the orbital environment. It contributes to CNES’s reflections on green taxonomy, integrating regulatory and territorial dimensions of space activities.

Expected outcomes are threefold:

• Scientific: production of a theoretical framework, spatial indicators, and a comparative atlas (Algeria–France).

• Institutional: creation of decision-support tools to integrate nocturnal issues into territorial policies.

• Societal: reinforcement of scientific mediation and public awareness of the night sky as both heritage to preserve and resource to protect.

Ultimately, this project reconsiders the nocturnal sky as a strategic lever for territorial sustainability, a sensory and symbolic heritage, and a governance tool linking the local and the global, the terrestrial and the extra-atmospheric. Rethinking the night not as emptiness but as a territorial resource means rehabilitating darkness as a condition for an ecology of perception and for an inclusive, sensitive governance of the shared sky.

For its implementation, this doctoral research will be hosted at EDYTEM Lab, part of OSUG, which also includes IPAG. It will be supervised by Mélanie Duval, CNRS Senior Researcher in heritage studies, and Radia Bouaroudj, Professor of Urban Planning at the University of Constantine 3. Fieldwork in Algeria will receive logistical support from the Research Center in Astronomy, Astrophysics and Geophysics (CRAAG, Algiers) and the Department for the Legal Protection and Promotion of Cultural Heritage, Algerian Ministry of Culture.

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For more Information about the topics and the co-financial partner (found by the lab!); contact Directeur de thèse - melanie.duval@univ-smb.fr

Then, prepare a resume, a recent transcript and a reference letter from your M2 supervisor/ engineering school director and you will be ready to apply online  before March 13th, 2026 Midnight Paris time!