Professor Nathalie Lemarchand — President of the International Geographical Union (IGU)
Professor Nathalie Lemarchand is a French geographer and the current President of the International Geographical Union (IGU), serving in this role since 2024. She is Professor of Geography at Université Paris 8 Vincennes–Saint-Denis and is affiliated with the LADYSS research laboratory (Laboratoire Dynamiques Sociales et Recomposition des Espaces).
Born in Rouen, France, in 1964, Professor Lemarchand studied at the University of Rouen and developed her academic career in urban, social, and cultural geography. Her principal research field is the geography of retailing and consumption, with particular attention to the relationships between commerce, culture, urban transformation, leisure, and everyday life.
One of the distinctive features of her scholarship is her effort to move beyond a conventional understanding of retail geography as simply the study of the location and distribution of shops. Instead, she examines commercial spaces as places where economic activity, cultural meaning, social interaction, and urban identity intersect. Her work on retailtainment explores how shopping centres and other commercial environments increasingly combine consumption with leisure, entertainment, and cultural experience.
Her research has also traced the transformation of French retail geography over more than four decades. Recent publications continue to address the changing geography of retail and consumption, including transformations in food distribution and the effects of mass retailing on urban landscapes.
Professor Lemarchand has long been active in geographical organizations in France and internationally. Before becoming IGU President, she served as a Vice-President of the International Geographical Union, was involved in the French National Committee of Geography (CNFG), and participated in both the scientific and organizing committees of the 2022 IGU Centennial Congress in Paris.
Another important dimension of her international work is her commitment to linguistic and intellectual diversity in global geography. She has written about the internationalization of geographical knowledge and the role of languages in global academic exchange, including the challenges faced by geographical scholarship produced outside dominant Anglophone networks.
As President of the IGU, Professor Lemarchand therefore represents not only French geography but also a broader tradition that connects urban geography, cultural geography, consumption, everyday life, and international geographical cooperation.
