Laurent Touchart

Laurent Touchart is a geographer specialising in limnology, the study of lakes and ponds. His research areas are the Russian world, Eastern Europe and Western France. A university lecturer, agrégé, doctor and HDR, he was chairman of the scientific and technical council of the “inland wetlands” cluster, deputy director of the CNRS Géolab joint research unit in charge of the Limoges site, and then director of the Cedete research laboratory at the University of Orléans.
His work initially focused on large natural lakes, in particular Lake Baikal, and then on dammed lakes. Since the late 1990s, he has focused his attention on ponds.