Current Position

Petros Chatzimpiros is an Associate Professor in the Paris Diderot University. He mainly teaches in the Department of Geography and in Master Degrees on Energy, Ecology and Society and develops his research in the Paris Interdisciplinary Energy Research Institute (PIERI)/ Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire des Energies de Demain (LIED).

Quick presentation

Petros Chatzimpiros is an Associate Professor in the Paris Diderot University since 2012. He graduated in Civil Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens (NTU, Athens, Greece, 2004), holds a Master Degree in Environmental Science and Engineering from the National School of Civil Engineering in France (ENPC, 2006) and defended his PhD thesis in 2011 (UMV, France) in the field of Human Geography in relation to urban food supply in historical perspective. His PhD thesis entitles : “The environmental imprints of urban food supply : Paris, meat and milk, 19th-21st centuries”. His research integrates knowledge in biogeochemistry, agronomy, geography, ecosystem energetics, urban and rural history to study the long-term dynamics between urban resource demand and agroecosystems specialization. The aim is to understand the effects of limiting factors on human systems evolution and to assess impacts of supply chains on biogeochemical cycles and energy systems. In his PhD thesis, he developed a novel modelling approach for impact assessment, which integrates resource use and nutrient losses in spatially-scattered agrosystems in relation to urban dietary transitions in historical perspective. His current research mainly focuses on sustainable food security from an interdisciplinary energy perspective. The main goal is to study possible ways for sustaining the energy consumption of agricultural systems by intermittent renewable energy flows. In this line, his research brings together various scientific fields and dynamic modelling approaches for tackling diachronic sustainability issues, like food security and energy transitions, from a global system perspective.

Education in titles

• Graduation in Civil Engineering, from the National Technical University of Athens, 2004.

• Master Degree in "Environmental Science and Engineering", specialty Aquatic Systems and Water Management, French National School of Civil Engineering (Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées, ENPC), France 2006.

• PhD thesis, "The environmental imprints of urban food supply : Paris, meat and milk, 19th – 21st centuries", Paris Est Marne-la-Vallée University, (Université Paris Est Marne-la-Vallée, UPEM), France 2011.

• Temporary Teaching and Research Assistant Member (Attaché Temporaire d’Enseignement et de Recherche, ATER) in the Paris Est Marne-la-Vallée University (2011-2012), France, department of Urban Engineering.

Main Research themes

Energy and nutrient flows in agricultural systems and supply chains in historical perspective, land use patterns for food and energy, urban environmental imprints and food-prints in historical perspective (19th-21st centuries).

Teaching Experience

Since 2008, Petros Chatzimpiros has been teaching in graduate and post-graduate degrees in several Universities. In his current academic position, his teaching mainly focuses on : Human and Environmental Geography, ecosystem energetics and trophic chains, environmental systems and sustainability, biogeochemical cycles, human supply chains and related environmental impacts, energy and material flows in regional and global scales, urban/rural interactions and dynamics in historical perspective.

Main publications in peer-review journals

• Chatzimpiros, P. and Barles, S., Nitrogen food-print : N use related to meat and dairy consumption in France, Biogeosciences, 2013, doi:10.5194/bg-10-471-2013
• Billen G., Garnier J., Thieu V., Silvestre M., Barles S., and Chatzimpiros P., “Localising the nitrogen imprint of the Paris food supply : the potential of organic farming and changes in human diet”. Biogeosciences, 9, 607–616, 2012.
• Billen G., Barles S., Chatzimpiros P., Garnier J., “Grain, meat and vegetables to feed Paris : where did and do they come from ? Localising Paris food supply areas from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century”, Regional Environmental Change, 2011, DOI 10.1007/s10113-011-0244-7
• Benoît M., Chatzimpiros P., Thieu V., Les territoires d’alimentation des villes : empreinte alimentaire et bassin d’approvisionnement, deux concept de l’agronomie des territoires, Agronomie, Environnement et Sociétés, 2011.
• Chatzimpiros, P. and Barles, S., Nitrogen, land and water inputs in changing cattle farming systems. A historical comparison for France, 19th-21st centuries, Science of the Total Environment, 408(20), pp. 4644-4653, 2010.

Main International Conferences for presented papers

Environmental History (Munich, 2013), LCA for Food, (St Malo, 2012), Nitrogen and Global Change (Edinburg, 2011), Ecological Economics (Ljubljana, 2010, Istanbul, 2011, Rio-de-Janeiro, 2012), Industrial Ecology (Prague, 2008).