Ecole française de Rome
The Ecole française de Rome is a public institution under the Ministry for Higher Education and Research. Originally the Roman branch of the École française d'Athènes (1873), and then briefly operated as a School of Archaeology (1874), it was founded under its present name in 1875 and installed in the Palais Farnèse, which it now shares with the French Embassy in Italy. A centre for French scholarship in Italy and the Central Mediterranean in the fields of history, archaeology and the social sciences, the School operates within the framework of research programmes and initiatives conducted in collaboration with French and Italian partners as well as institutions in North Africa and countries bordering the Adriatic (Albania, Croatia, Serbia and Slovenia). These initiatives give rise to academic exchanges within the framework of workshops, seminars, and conferences, PhD programmes, and the organisation of exhibitions. The school welcomes members, post-doctoral and visiting scholars, and scholarship students.
Suganya Anandakichenin (PI), Giovanni Ciotti (University of Hamburg) and S. A. S. Sarma (EFEO, Pondicherry) lead this ten-month project (August 2021-May 2022) aims to clean, digitize, and catalogue a portion of about 180 manuscripts belonging to two collections (called "Kalliṭaikuṟicci" and Villiampākkam).
These manuscripts, many of which date from the mid-19th century, contain texts of various genres, in Tamil, Sanskrit and Manipravalam, written in Tamil and Grantha. Previously neglected, these relics of the past will give us a clear idea of the reading and study choices of a Tamil and Vishnu Brahmin scholarly family from the 19th century onwards. Work on the project is currently underway at the EFEO Center in Pondicherry.
The winner of the 2021 French-Language Book Prize is "La réforme politique en Birmanie pendant le premier moment colonial (1819-1878)" by Aurore Candier, published by the EFEO !
The collection of periodicals in the Leroi-Gourhan collection includes 30 titles, the most complete of which are 民俗藝術 Minzoku geijutsu and 工藝 Kōgei, a publication co-edited by Yanagi Muneyoshi, the specialist in folk arts and "mingei studies". This monthly journal, with a print run of only 1000 copies, devoted to craftsmanship, materials and tools used in the making of objects, is rare and precious.
