About me

A colleague has mentioned being surprised by how much my research is intertwined with my life. It is quite accurate, as I generally tend to apply whatever I learn to all facets of my life, and tend to start learning about a subject as soon as it becomes relevant.

One of the foremost ways in which this applies is my identity, as I am a part of slightly too many minorities. To name just some of them, I’m queer and non-binary, as well as physically disabled. This is the motivating factor for some of my research. It also has a few consequences.

First, I tend to go around in an electric scooter (which is very fun when you travel the world), so if you organise a conference and would like to invite me as a speaker please keep in mind that stairs are my nemeses. That said, I have traveled to more than 40 countries and lived in a few, including India, so I have a lot of experience navigating this kind of trouble.

Second, my current name is not the name my parents gave me and I generally go by Enka (and use neutral pronouns such as the singular they). If you want to know more about this, I wrote a list of Frequently Asked Questions when I fully came out publicly: Enka’s FAQ. I have used multiple names over the course of my life (this makes it quite a mess for paper indexation) and quite a few people know me as Koliaza (the address of this website) which was my pseudonym as a photograph and street artist (I used to play the keys in the street and with the Fanfarons de Paname).

Finally, I tend to be vocal when it comes to discrimination, so if you are planning panels entirely made up of men (or similar nonsense) I will not stay silent (but can generally provide names of qualified people to invite).

Outside of work, I enjoy writing fiction once in a while (notably with Olivier Pivot), playing the keys (although my PhD forced me to put this on hold), and I used to wonder about dropping out of science to do photography, thankfully I didn’t (here’s my old website).