Yves Goudineau

Anthropologist and former Director of the École française d'Extrême-Orient (EFEO) from 2014 to 2018, Yves Goudineau is Professor Emeritus (chair of the 'Comparative Anthropology of Southeast Asia'). 
Since the 1990s, his main research work has been in Mainland Southeast Asia, after an initial period devoted to the Chinese domain. He has conducted long ethnographic surveys in South Laos, among little-known Katuic societies of the Annamese Cordillera (Kantou, Ngkriang Ta Oï, Pacoh, etc.), observing the restoration of collective identities and the resumption of ritual practices long prevented by wars. More generally, his publications concern the ethnohistory of ethnic groups on the margins of the ancient civilisations of the Indochinese peninsula, as well as the sacrificial rituals of Austroasiatic minorities on which he is pursuing a regional anthropology project.
Another dimension of Yves Goudineau's research concerns the relationship between anthropology and Asian studies. He has analysed the decisive theoretical contribution of Marcel Granet to structural anthropology in the fields of kinship and mythology. He has also published on various orientalist works (Henri Maspero, Paul Pelliot), and has shown how the problematic renewal operated by Paul Mus and Charles Archaimbault had a lasting influence on the historical anthropology of Southeast Asia.
Yves Goudineau was initially trained in philosophy (Paris IV and Paris X universities, ENS Saint-Cloud), then he pursued studies in social anthropology (Paris X-Nanterre university) and in Chinese (Inalco). A student at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (EPHE), he defended his doctoral thesis in 1982 under the supervision of Professor Léon Vandermeersch.

His stays in Asia began in 1979 in Hong Kong, where he was a cultural attaché at the French Consulate General, and where he undertook later fieldwork in Hakka villages. A researcher at the Laboratoire d'Ethnologie et de Sociologie Comparative (CNRS-LESC), he was recruited in 1984 by Orstom (later IRD) to initiate anthropological projects in Southeast Asia. From Singapore, he carried out a number of missions in Indonesia and Malaysia, before being posted to Laos in 1993, where he directed several research programmes for seven years and acted as a consultant for UNESCO and the UNDP. In 1999 he joined the École française d'Extrême-Orient: elected Professor, he served as its scientific director (directeur des études) from 2004 to 2008, then headed the Vientiane and Chiang Mai Centers, before being appointed Director of the EFEO in 2014.
Yves Goudineau has also had an international career: from 1986 to 1988, he was Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) at the University of Singapore; from 1995 to 1998, he was Honorary Research Fellow at the Centre of Asian Studies at the University of Hong Kong; and from 2008 to 2010, he was Visiting Professor at the University of Oxford (Faculty of Oriental Studies, and Wolfson College), and Research Fellow at the Maison française d'Oxford. He has also been the coordinator of two major European projects on Southeast Asia - involving over seventy researchers - successively won by the EFEO (SEATIDE and CRISEA).

After having taught at the EPHE with François Bizot at the chair 'Buddhism of Southeast Asia' (1999-2004), Yves Goudineau has continued since 2005 at the EHESS the research seminar 'Comparative Anthropology of Southeast Asia' at the request of Georges Condominas. He is a member of Centre Asie du Sud-Est (CASE, UMR CNRS-EHESS-Inalco), has supervised numerous doctoral and master's students, and has regularly been called upon to chair thesis or HDR examination committees. In 2016, he was awarded the Légion d'Honneur for his career as a researcher and university professor.

Yves Goudineau has been the president of the French Association for Research on Southeast Asia (AFRASE), a member of several editorial committees (BEFEO, Les Chemins de l'Ethnologie, Aséanie, Moussons, etc.) and a member of various scientific councils, including the IRD Scientific Council, the CNRS National Committee (Section 38, Social Anthropology), and the Asia Scientific Council of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.