Rémi Coignard-Friedman

A researcher first. A methodologist and qualitative analysis expert, for twenty-five years I have worked with qualitative material — interviews, focus groups, observation — and I teach its analysis to those confronting it for the first time and to those who need to deepen their understanding and their skills.

A certified NVivo trainer (Lumivero), I work with proprietary software and open-source alternatives alike, because the right tool depends on the project, not the catalogue. My work is split between Europe and Canada. Added to that are collaborations with West Africa — notably Université Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar —, Madagascar, Mayotte, French Polynesia and Costa Rica. So many crossings between vocabularies and research traditions that constantly need translating.

I am also a maker. As a sociographer, I join the sociological eye to photography and video: another language for telling and showing social realities, with a wider aim and a broader audience than journals reach. Photographs, videos, photo essays, a blog, interviews — these are the forms the work takes. The images on this site are mine.

Paris: psychology, then sociology

Two bachelor’s degrees — psychology at Paris V, sociology at Paris VII — then a master’s and a DEA in sociology, the latter split between Paris VII and the Université de Montréal. That DEA is what brought me to Quebec in 1995.

First fieldwork: interviewing as a craft

CIRST at UQAM on student pathways, an INSPQ survey on smoking in Quebec schools, then coordinating fieldwork across Quebec for the research group “Medication as a social and cultural object” at the Université de Montréal, under Johanne Collin and Marcelo Otero. Interviews, focus groups, analysis in Nudist — and the conviction that a guide is judged by what it lets you analyze six months later.

Eleven years in clinical and primary care research

Oncology and lung-cancer follow-up with Éveline Hudon and Michelle Aubin (Universités de Montréal and Laval) — some fifty interviews and a paper in the CMAJ; palliative care with Serge Daneault; six years in the Department of Family Medicine at Université Laval; then, at the CR CHUM, bullying in surgery and distress screening.

Doctorate in sociology, UQAM

Dissertation accepted under the supervision of Marcelo Otero. A qualitative study carried out end to end: constructing the object, the corpus, thematic then analytical analysis, and explicit work on the assumptions behind the approach.

CRIUGM, then CRISM–CRCHUM

Cognitive ageing and co-design workshops at the CRIUGM; then leading the qualitative work of Dr Julie Bruneau’s laboratory at the CRCHUM, CURMA team — HepCO Aging, HepCO Pain, CUSHIP, TAOI. I also teach qualitative analysis at UQAM, at graduate level. Research with people who use drugs, training new staff, and organizing the 2024 ACFAS symposium on interviewing vulnerable populations.

End of life at home: Montreal and Paris

At the CREGÉS and the Université de Montréal, the project “Home until the end?” led by Isabelle Van Pevenage (SSHRC Insight): fifteen triads of older person / family member / care worker, some forty interviews. In parallel, co-investigator at the GHU AP-HP and Université Paris-Saclay on decision pathways around dying at home.

Teaching, all along

Teaching did not come after the research: it has run alongside it for twenty-five years. A certified NVivo trainer, in 2024 I took over the practice Didier Dupont founded and widened it — open-source tools, data collection as much as analysis, the writing of findings. In May 2026, a paper at the LibreQDA symposium at the Université de Sherbrooke on the tool in the service of interpretation.

Journal articles

1. Høj, S. B., Coignard-Friedman, R., Sako, A., & Bruneau, J. (2024). Harnessing telemedicine to deliver patient-centered care for opioid use disorder within a community-based harm reduction service: a mixed methods evaluation. International Journal of Drug Policy.
2. Daneault, S., et al. (2016). Ultimate journey of the terminally ill: ways and pathways of hope. Canadian Family Physician.
3. Hudon, É., Coignard-Friedman, R., et al. (2009). Le rôle du médecin de famille dans le suivi des patients atteints de cancer du poumon. CMAJ.
4. Hudon, É., Coignard-Friedman, R., Aubin, M., et al. (2008). Interprofessional collaboration in the follow-up of patients with lung cancer. Journal of Palliative Care, 24(3), 198.
5. Coignard-Friedman, R. (2005). De la difficulté d’être soi. Cahiers de recherche sociologique, 41-42, 291-294.

Book chapters

1. Leibing, A., & Coignard-Friedman, R. (2006). Mémoire défaillante : utilisation de médicaments et reclassification de la maladie d’Alzheimer. In Collin, Otero & Monnais (eds.), Le médicament : vecteur de socialité. Presses de l’Université du Québec.
2. Coignard-Friedman, R. (2008). Représentations de l’automobile, covoiturage et individualité contemporaine. In Vincent, Rocca & Clochard (eds.), Auto mobilité et alter mobilités. L’Harmattan.

Conference papers

1. Coignard-Friedman, R. (2026). L’outil au service de l’interprétation : penser, cadrer et accompagner l’analyse qualitative assistée par ordinateur. Colloque LibreQDA, Université de Sherbrooke, 24-25 mai 2026.
2. Coignard-Friedman, R. (2024). Organizer and chair of the ACFAS symposium L’entrevue de recherche avec des populations fragilisées : enjeux, limites et défis.
3. Meloche-Dumas, L., et al. (2019). Intimidation en chirurgie : perceptions divergentes entre les étudiants en médecine et les autres membres de l’équipe chirurgicale. 8^e Forum international francophone de pédagogie des sciences de la santé.

His expertise

He knew the software better than anyone, but his real subject lay elsewhere: the work of thematization, inter-rater validation, the move to producing findings. He taught me that NVivo is never the question — only a way of making reasoning visible.

His trust

Nearly thirty years of friendship, and a practice built over twenty years that he let me carry on. He did it without reservation, and without ever asking me to do it his way.

His mark

Rigour without jargon, the habit of starting from participants’ real data rather than a practice set, and a refusal to sell a technical solution to a problem of method. That is what remains in every session I teach.

My friend, so dear to my heart and to my soul, Didier Dupont took flight yesterday — gently, at peace.

This man made me the man I am. Through his intelligence, his sensitivity, his love of words and of the arts, his extreme delicacy, generosity, tenderness. I had the joy of sharing so much with him — so many moments, words, laughs, so much music, film, painting, photography, literature, so many writers and artists. Readings, analyses, visions, landscapes and conversations shared around Michel Foucault, Jean Baudrillard, Edgar Morin, Emil Cioran, Louis Calaferte, Guy de Maupassant, and more besides.

Two days ago we said to each other how lucky we had been to find one another and to walk this gentle road of friendship. I never knew what I had come to Quebec looking for, I told him… but I know that this man is what I found. This man who, by who he was, made a man of me — above all through his capacity to live his sensitivity, his wholeness.

I will miss his great enfolding arms, his eloquence, the music of his speech. We are the fruit of the people we meet, of our love stories. That love was, and is, immense.

Adesias my Didier, my Zizier… my didiot.