Stéphanie Barral is a sociologist at the French National Institute for Agronomic and Environmental Research, with expertise in economic sociology and political sociology. Her work focuses on the contemporary transformation of environmental and agricultural policies. Her first book (Capitalismes Agraires, Presses de Sciences Po, 2015) analyzes the hegemonic development of capitalist palm oil plantations in South East Asia against social and environmental criticism. Her on-going research deals with carbon and biodiversity offsets as well as payments for environmental services in France and in the USA, in particular as they highlight trade-offs between scientific knowledge, economic constraints and institutional normativity and as they constitute a trend of agricultural policies privatization.