She was director of the French Institute of the Near East Urban Observatory in Damascus from 2007 to 2011 and is currently a research fellow at the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD). She is also a member of the Social Sciences Research Center on African, American and Asian Worlds in Paris. Valerie earned her PhD in urban planning from the French Institute of Urbanism in Paris and has written on the changes in urban planning under Bashar al-Assad, prospects for the reconstruction of informal settlements and the role of urban planning projects of renewal as a tool in the conflict.