Julien Deur: engineering skills at the heart of public policies

Julien Deur (APE 2018) – Consultant at AFD – French Development Agency.

Access his LinkedIn profile.

Having good results in science, Julien Deur was first oriented towards preparatory scientific classes which then enabled him to join the École des Ponts ParisTech (ENPC). There, within the economics department, he found an opportunity to apply engineering tools to topics of more interest to him: the social sciences. Julien joined the Master APE – Analysis and Policy in Economics of PSE in the last year of the École des Ponts, which allowed him to strengthen his technical background and to discover new fields of application such as urban economics.

He joined CIRED in 2017, first as an intern then as a part-time research engineer, occasion for Julien to work on the dynamics of population displacement in urban areas and, more specifically, of gentrification, both on theoretical and statistical aspects. This collaboration with CIRED strongly inspired his master research thesis, both in the theme addressed – urban economics – and in the approach used – public policies. After thinking about doing a thesis related to his master dissertation for a while, he finally decided to try a more operational experience, directly linked to public policies. In order to satisfy his desire for experience abroad, he applied for the post of Deputy Head of the Economic Department at the French Embassy in Bangladesh, which he joined in 2019.

At the end of his two years in the economic service, he was recruited by the director of the branch of AFD – French Development Agency located in Dhaka in order to put his knowledge of Bangladesh and its economy at the service of identification and the instruction of new projects, as an external consultant. He thus found the opportunity to reconcile all of his achievements, working on various projects such as health, transport, microfinance and natural disasters, while adopting an engineering approach: identify then co-define the need with the beneficiary and provide an optimal solution.

Edited by Paris School of Economics – Lettre PSE number 43