Today, her research explores one of the most pressing questions facing organisations: how people make sense of generative

 artificial intelligence as it transforms the way they work, learn, and share knowledge. Drawing on two decades of ethnographic experience and a deeply cross-cultural perspective, Florence brings a unique human-centred lens to the study of technological change. We spoke with her about her journey to Estonia, her experience at TalTech, and her ambitions for the future.

Please introduce yourself

I am Florence. I am from Paris, born in Saint-Germain-en-Laye. I grew up with four brothers, and I now have two teenagers, so football, as an Afropean, is a very big part of my life.

My entire academic background is French. I hold two bachelor's degrees; one in Ethnology and one in History and two master's degrees; one in French Didactics and Teaching and Learning, and one in Anthropology. I also hold the national teaching certificate to teach History and French Literature at secondary level in France.

Twenty years ago, I left Paris with my husband and moved to India, where I created a mission-driven business in the south of the country. I launched a home design company in Mahabalipuram and employed thirty-five young people who were experiencing difficulties integrating into society and the workforce. It was one of the most formative experiences of my life.

Three years later, I moved to South Africa, where I became involved in a funded project to develop a global history curriculum,

 while trying to keep my company running in India. Two years after that, I moved to Hong Kong, where I specialised in emerging technology in education. Back in 2012, ICT in education was a rapidly growing field, and I spent six years deepening my expertise, working as a professor, head of department, and IB coordinator.

My work at Hong Kong Baptist University eventually opened the door to McGill University in Canada, where I joined as a faculty lecturer. Those eight years working at the intersection of education and emerging technology gradually shifted my focus toward a bigger question: how artificial intelligence is transforming not just classrooms, but organisations more broadly. That curiosity brought me to business administration research. And as a family, we were also ready to come back to Europe.

Where did you first hear about Estonia and how did you end up living and doing your PhD studies here?

After 20 years of expatriation, we were homesick. We wanted to come back to Europe, not too far from France. My husband told me about an opportunity that he had with an Estonian company. As a former history teacher, I already knew a little about the Baltic region. From an educational perspective, I was also familiar with Estonia’s remarkable transformation into one of the world’s leading digital societies. My parents were born in Benin, West Africa, when it was a French colony and I have heard that Estonia helped the Beninese government to transfer to a digital e-resident country. That led me to research about Estonian universities and TalTech. It was a perfect move for me  

What were your expectations about studying at TalTech? Have they been met?

My path to TalTech started through a very human connection. A HR employee from my husband's company came across my CV and strongly encouraged me to reach out to TalTech and present my project. That was the push I needed. From the very first meeting, I knew this was the university in which I wanted to grow. It felt genuinely inclusive, the staff was helpful and engaged, and everything seemed designed for students to succeed. That first impression has never faded.

Beyond that initial feeling, choosing TalTech was also a very deliberate decision. This is not my first doctoral experience, but my third attempt, and I came here with very clear ideas about what I needed. I knew I needed a rigorous but human-scale environment, an academic place with a strong scientific structure, engaged supervision, and a research community focused enough that you can build real working relationships. TalTech gives me exactly that. It is serious without being impersonal, and that balance matters enormously when you are doing long-term, immersive doctoral work.    

Tell us more about the PhD programme in Business Administration and your field of research.

Organisations today are introducing generative AI into their daily work. And while academic research on AI is flooding the scientific landscape, we still know very little about what happens inside those organisations when such a disruptive technology takes hold. Existing research tends to focus on adoption, performance, and productivity outcomes. But what about the human experience of that process, observed through an anthropological and ethnographic lens? How do people within organisations make sense of it together? How does it shape the way they learn and share knowledge?  These are the questions I want to explore.

Choosing Estonia for my research is not an arbitrary choice. It is one of the most digitally mature societies in Europe which means the encounter with GenAI is happening there in a particularly visible and advanced way. I am bringing the tools of an experienced ethnographer into the field of business administration because you cannot understand how people make sense of things together by standing outside and counting. You must be present.  

And why business administration? Because it is the disciplinary space where these questions about organisations, knowledge, and learning are taken seriously as research objects. My background is in education and anthropology, 20 years of fieldwork of being present in communities, of listening carefully to how people make sense of their world together. Business administration does not replace that background. It gives it a new home. One where the organisational world becomes the field, and where the questions I have always been asking, find a rigorous academic framework to land in. TalTech's Business Administration programme is where those two worlds meet for me. And that is precisely why I am here.

You have lived in multiple other countries. How would you compare your experience of living in Estonia?

Coming from Canada after eight years of expatriation, Estonia gives me a surprising feeling of being at home.

In many ways, the scale feels familiar. The infrastructure; smaller roads, smaller cars, more modest portions at restaurants, reminds me of France, where I grew up. As an Afropean, being back in Europe matters to me deeply. I am not too far from Paris, which is where I belong.

People often ask me about the weather and, after experiencing minus forty degrees in Ottawa, I can say that the Estonian winter, while real, is far more manageable than what I endured in Ontario or Quebec. That alone made the transition easier.

I also lived in Hong Kong for several years, and I became accustomed to places where things work efficiently, where administration is fast, logistics are smooth, and daily life does not create unnecessary friction. Estonia is exactly like that. The digital infrastructure here is remarkable, and it made my installation far smoother than in other countries I have lived in.

After eight months in Tallinn, I genuinely feel part of this city. I cannot speak Estonian yet and I know that will take years, but I use a few words, and I feel that people appreciate the effort. 

What has been the most unexpected, positive, or funny experience you’ve had with Estonians while living here so far?

During my first winter in Tallinn, I was genuinely motivated to try ice swimming. I had heard so much about it, and I wanted to embrace the Estonian way of life fully. I prepared myself; I showed up and then I stood at the edge of the Baltic Sea, looked at the ice, and simply could not do it. My body refused. I panicked.

What makes this particularly funny is that I spent eight years in Canada, where Nordic spas are a beloved winter ritual. The whole point is to plunge into hot water, jump into the snow, and go back again. I have done that without hesitation. But something about seeing the ice floating in the Baltic Sea triggered a completely different reaction in me. There was no hot tub waiting on the other side, just the sea. I still have not done it. But I have not given up either.

What do you miss the most back in France?

Desserts and cheese, though I must admit the feeling of missing them is far less intense here than it was when I was living in Canada.

In Canada, finding good French cheese was a real challenge. French ingredients were expensive, hard to source, and often simply not available. Here in Estonia, I can find an extraordinary variety of cheeses from across Europe, and I can find almost everything I need to cook French recipes at home. The European context makes an enormous difference.

Would you recommend other students from France to study and do research at TalTech? Why?

My first recommendation is simple: come with an open mind. Estonian academic culture is direct, efficient, and genuinely supportive and once you embrace that, you will thrive.

For French students specifically, I want to say something that surprised me. I come from the humanities; anthropology, education, social sciences. TalTech is a university of technology. And yet from the very first day, nobody made me feel that I did not belong here. No raised eyebrows, no subtle suggestions that my background was somehow misplaced. Quite the opposite. The university is genuinely inclusive, the people I have met come from remarkably diverse backgrounds, and the transition from a human sciences environment to STEM far smoother than I anticipated.  

Practically speaking, Tallinn is an extraordinarily liveable city for a student or researcher. It is safe, compact, and well organised. Public transport works. Administration works. For someone trying to focus on research, that kind of frictionless daily life is a real gift.

TalTech is a rigorous but human-scale institution. You are not a number here. Supervision is close, the research community is accessible, and the academic environment is serious without being cold. For doctoral candidates especially, that combination is rare and valuable.

And finally, you are still in Europe. Paris is a short direct flight away. The cheese is better than you expect. And the winters, while real, are survivable. I promise.

What are your plans after completing PhD studies?

After completing my PhD, I want to continue doing research that is genuinely cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural in a way that reflects who I am and where I have been.

My vision is to build bridges between anthropology, business, and technology. These fields need each other far more than academia traditionally acknowledges. Technology shapes organisations, organisations shape how technology is adopted and used and understanding that dynamic requires the tools of all three worlds. My PhD in Business Administration led me to explore how organisations navigate technological change. In my worldview, change is not simply technical or managerial, they are deeply human. That is where ethnography and the social sciences have something essential to contribute.

But I also want to build geographic bridges and that ambition is deeply personal. I have West African heritage, and during my master's I conducted ethnographic fieldwork on the African continent. I also lived in South Africa for two years. Those experiences gave me a lived, embodied understanding of how communities in different parts of the world relate to knowledge, innovation, and to change. Add to that my years in India, Hong Kong, in Canada, and now in Estonia, and I carry a genuinely plural perspective that I believe has real value. Not only in academic research, but in applied contexts where organisations are trying to navigate digital transformation across cultures.

My longer-term ambition is to participate in research programmes that take those comparative perspectives seriously — ones that bring together scholars, practitioners, and organisations from different continents to think collectively about what human-centered technology means across cultural contexts.