Nicolas Bautes is a geographer working in the fields of urban studies, social, and political geography, especially in South Asia (India) and Latin America (Brazil). His research mainly involves reflection on the social embeddedness of small-scale initiatives, their relation with space and their political configuration. 

After a few years on deputation as a Research Fellow at the Department of Social Sciences of the French Institute of Pondicherry (UMIFRE 021 CNRS), India, where he worked on the city-makers and the social memories of artisans, among them potters and fishers, Nicolas returned to the University of Caen, Normandy, France, and was involved in several research projects, the last being Subaltern Urbanization in the tourist mountains of South and South Asia (URBALTOUR). From 2019 to 2023, he coordinated an interdisciplinary team of researchers from the French Institute of Pondicherry on the research project "Coastal Transformation and Fisher's well-being: comparative perspectives India-Europe". He is currently a Professor of Geography at the Université Paul Valéry - Montpellier 3 in Montpellier, France. 

Nicolas also serves as one of the co-editors for the Knowhow in a Shifting World edited volume of the HAB Methodologies book series, originally brought about through his connection with the IFP as one of HAB's consortium institutions. This edited volume discusses the question of knowhow, not only as an epistemic question of knowledge production but also, as overt, and or covert, process(es) of transmission and learning, in different contexts, and to address, methodologically, the prevailing binary between knowhow and knowledge.