Newsletter

The Seoul Colloquium in Korea Studies, organised by the EFEO Centre in Seoul, is chaired by Arnaud Bertrand, PhD in Sinology, an associate member of the CNRS (ARscAN-Central Asia), former curator at the Guimet Museum, and head of international research at the École des Arts Joailliers, on the theme “Chosŏn embassies, Jesuit trompe-l’œil art and an artistic education of the mind: the place of ch’aekkŏri in international art history?”.

The Colloquium, conducted in English, will exceptionally take place via videoconference (to register, see the link below).

On 10 September, Catherine Scheer will give a lecture entitled “Inconspicuous spiritual ecopolitics: Indigeneity and Christianity in highland Cambodia and Thailand”. This lecture is organised as part of the four-year (2023–2026) collaboration programme between the EFEO and the Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre.

On 24 September, David Wharton (associate researcher at the EFEO) will speak at the sixth international conference “Ancient Manuscripts and Intangible Cultural Heritage”, organised at Mahasarakham University, on the topic “The Crisis of Manuscript Loss”. He will present the projects on Thai manuscripts being carried out at the EFEO Centre in Bangkok in collaboration with the Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre.

From 25 September, the Centre will be hosting Chiaping Liao, a Master’s student at the University of Bologna, for a period of two months, as part of her research project entitled “Entangled Material Flows and Global Networks: Ceramic Circulation and Chinese Influx in Songkhla, Thailand (12th–18th Centuries)”.

From September to November, the Centre is hosting Armelle Ninnin, the recipient of a postdoctoral mobility grant from the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme (FMSH) and IRASEC. Her research focuses on “Urban heritage commons: transforming heritage regimes and urban development through collective action, the case of Chiang Mai, Thailand”.

From 13 to 17 September, the Centre is hosting Jérôme Lopez and Xavier Garcia, from ARFI (Association for the Research into Imaginary Folklore), as part of a project carried out in partnership with the Alliance Française in Bangkok.

The Centre is hosting:

– Véronique Degroot, from 15 to 30 September. As part of the BRIN-EFEO project, she is visiting the Bale Kambang site in Batang, in the centre of the island of Java, with her colleague Agustijanto Indradjaja.

– Dewa Ayu Carma Citrawati, a PhD student at the University of Hamburg, to work with Arlo Griffiths, her supervisor, from 1 to 15 September.

The Centre is hosting the HEURIST training course for IDENK and CIK:

– 1 September: presentation by Ian Johnson on data entry, simple structural modifications, creating queries, simple export/import operations and creating customised reports, followed by a practical session where participants will apply what they have learnt.

– 4 September: a question-and-answer session to address any queries raised following the first training session.

The Centre’s librarian, Alya Zahra Fauzy, is on a working visit to France to take part in an intensive French language course in Lyon, followed by a training programme at the EFEO library in Paris.

Activities of the Centre’s researchers:

On 17 September, S.A.S. Sarma chaired the public defence of K.K. Sajitha’s doctoral thesis, submitted to the Department of Sanskrit Sāhitya at Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit, Kalady, Kerala.

S.L.P. Anjaneya Sarma presented two papers on Sanskrit grammar at the Mahāgaṇapati Vākyārtha Sadas, held at the Śṛṅgeri Śāradā Pīṭham from 19 to 27 September. He presented “Vyākaraṇaśāstre – ‘kriyāsamabhihāre loṭ, loṭo hisvau, vā ca tadhvamoḥ’ (Pā. Sū. 3.4.2) iti sūtravicāraḥ”.

From 23 to 25 September, Vigneshwaran Muralidaran and Vishnupriya Srinivasan will travel to Naples to take part in the International Indology Graduate Research Symposium (IIGRS), organised at the “Orientale” University. Vigneshwaran Muralidaran’s paper is entitled “From Vēṟu to Metrical Name: Editorial Strategies and the Shifting Burden of Knowledge in Tamil Talapurāṇam Editions”, whilst Vishnupriya Srinivasan’s is entitled “Behind the Incorrect Sanskrit: Tamil Conceptual Interference and Authorial Intention in the ORI 2519 Manuscript of the Kāmākṣīvilāsa”.

S.A.S. Sarma is taking part in the international workshop “Seeds of Mantras” as well as in the reading sessions organised as part of the ERC MANTRAMS project, which will be held at the University of Oxford from 26 September to 2 October 2026.

S.L.P. Anjaneya Sarma presents “ṣyaṅaḥ samprasāraṇaṁ putrapatyos tatpuruṣe (Pā. Sū. 6.1.13) iti sūtravicāraḥ” at the Pratāpa Hanumat Ṣaṣṭi Smaraṇa Sabhā, organised by his disciples in Vijayawada on 30 and 31 September.

From 14 to 26 September, Éric Bourdonneau is delivering a lecture and a tutorial on the “History of Ancient Cambodia” at the Royal University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh as part of the “Monsoon University” programme.

On 30 September, Éric Bourdonneau will represent the EFEO at the CIC-Preah Vihear in Siem Reap.

From 2 to 5 September, Hugo David is on a working visit to Budapest (Hungary) to take part in the conference ‘Tradition and Innovation in the Languages and Cultures of Premodern South Asia’, which is being held on 3 and 4 September at the Faculty of Humanities of Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. On 4 September, he will deliver a lecture entitled “The Two Lives of a Verse: Ambiguity and Its Resolution From Bhartṛhari to Appayya Dīkṣita” during the plenary session.

Guillaume Dutournier will be on the field in early september researching the current uses of the reference to the ‘School of the Heart’ (xinxue) in the town of Jingxi, in eastern Jiangxi. His previous work on the figure of Lu Jiuyuan (Southern Song dynasty) enables him to put into perspective the contemporary uses of the Lu clan in local tourism and identity-building initiatives, as well as in the practices of subjectivation among a variety of individuals. From 4 to 11 September, he is continuing his research into the cultural promotion of ‘temple festivals’ (miaohui) in southern Shanxi, building on the work carried out over the summer with a group of researchers from Beijing Normal University.

From 10 September to 21 December, Luca Gabbiani is staying in Taipei. He is spending a month at the Academia Sinica as a guest researcher, as part of the researcher exchange programme between EHESS and the Academia Sinica (Institute of History and Philology). The remainder of his stay will be devoted to his research work as part of the CRISOLIC programme.

Valérie Gillet will go to India, Tamil Nadu, for fieldwork in the Pudukkottai region (with Coline Lefrancq, CNRS), read Tamil inscriptions with the Pr. Vijayavenugopal at the EFEO Centre of Pondicherry, and meet in Chennai Indian partners in the frame of a project she is building.

Christine Hawixbrock is visiting the EFEO Centre in Vientiane from 26 August to 11 October to study the archaeological material unearthed at Vat Sang’O 5 and Vat Sang’O 3 (Vat Phu region, Champassak province) during the excavation campaigns of the French Archaeological Mission in Southern Laos (MAFSL), which she heads. Chloé Chollet (EPHE-PSL/CASE) will be joining her to take part in this work from 3 to 21 September.

On 7 September, Gregory Kourilsky will sit on the examination board for Mathilde Badey’s Master’s 2 thesis, entitled “The Lives of the Dead in Ayutthaya in the 17th century”, which she prepared at the University of Strasbourg under the supervision of Guillaume Ducœur.

From 1 to 4 September, Christophe Marquet will be taking part in the 36th conference of the European Association of Japanese Resource Specialists, on the theme “Voyages (un)bound: libraries, travel, and the making of Japan’s global image”, at Leiden University Libraries.

Frank Muyard is on a working visit to Vancouver from 15 to 18 September to conduct interviews on the history of Taiwanese archaeology.

On 23 September, Frank Muyard will take part in the thesis supervision committee (4th year) for Arielle Noy Gsell (Aix-Marseille University/EFEO), “Object repatriation and the networking of cultural property. Negotiated reciprocity between ethnological museums and indigenous communities in Taiwan”, supervised by Fiorella Allio (CNRS).

From 12 to 15 September, Christophe Pottier will be travelling to Copenhagen to carry out environmental DNA research with members of the Lundbeck Foundation GeoGenetics Centre, as part of the Franco-Khmer Archaeological Mission on Angkorian Land Use (MAFKATA).

On 17 and 18 September, Christophe Pottier has been invited to the “LiDAR and Ancient Landscapes” workshop, organised by Antoine Dorison and Marie Skłodowska-Curie/UKRI research fellow at the School of History, Classics and Archaeology at Newcastle University.

Christophe Pottier, director of the ANR DEEPFOREST project, will also take part in a project progress meeting on 21 September at the EFEO in Paris.

On 10 September, Catherine Scheer will speak at the Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre (SAC) in Bangkok. Her lecture is entitled “Inconspicuous spiritual ecopolitics: Indigeneity and Christianity in the highlands of Cambodia and Thailand”.

On 18 September, she will attend Kéthia Mathey’s thesis defence at the EHESS in Paris.

Catherine Scheer gave an interview to RFI Cambodia in which she discussed her research into the history of the Bunong people during the civil war.

Bertrand Porte is continuing to carry out inventory checks, monitor preparations for the renovation and extension of the Vat Phou Museum, and examine the artefacts selected for the new exhibition. He is supervising the laborious and delicate process of removing two sema sealed in reinforced concrete at the Savannakhet Museum, which will be transferred to Vat Phou whilst they undergo restoration.

LIDAR data mapping is continuing despite the rainy season, to complete and finalise the identification of archaeological remains initiated by Adam Wijker.

Following the floods in Champassak province during August, the aerial surveys carried out by the LIDAR team will enable the flood simulation process to be documented using LIDAR data for the town of Pakse.

Olga Nowicka (postdoctoral researcher, DiPiKA project) is presenting a paper entitled “ Preserved Manuscripts of Karippāla Nārāyaṇa Brahmānanda’s Yatyācārasaṃgraha and the Advaita Vedānta Monastic Tradition of Nampūtiri Brahmins in Kerala” at the fifth Global Sanskrit Conference, to be held from 28 to 30 September at Silpakorn University in Bangkok (Thailand).

On 24 September, the presentation day for the BnF DataLab research projects (2025–2026) will take place at the BnF’s François Mitterrand site, with the participation of some members of the project “ManjuGisunTranscript: HTR for non-Latin scripts. Transcription and utilisation of Manchu works on Gallica”.

Joint Master’s 1 & 2 seminar at INALCO, The Object in Context: Research in Asian Art History and Archaeology.

First semester from 24 September, weekly, Thursdays from 2.00 pm to 4.00 pm, room LO.04, 2 rue de Lille, Paris 75007, coordinated by Lia Wei (Inalco), alongside Estelle Bauer (Guimet Museum), Kunsang Namgyal-Lama (Inalco) and Pauline Sebillaud (CNRS).

Master 1 seminar, Japanese Architecture.

Kyoto Consortium for Japanese Studies, Columbia University (NY) / Dōshisha University (Kyoto), Mondays from 1.00 pm to 4.00 pm.

Master’s seminar at Sorbonne University, Archaeology in the Far East, starting on 15 September.

All EFEO publications are available on the publications website.

Marianne Bujard and Luca Gabbiani (eds.), Sovereignty and Religious Patronage in China (14th-20th Centuries), Bibliothèque de l’Institut des Hautes Études Chinoises, vol. XLIII, Paris, Collège de France, Institut des civilisations, 2026, 315 pages.

T. Rajarethinam, “The Role of Professor V. I. Subramaniyam in the History of Tamil Textual Criticism” (in Tamil), in Panmuga Nōkkil Prof. V. I. Subramaniyam, a commemorative volume of 12 collected articles, Chennai: Parisal Putthaganilayam, 2026, pages 106-116.

G. Vijayavenugopal, “Keezhaiyur Kalvettukkal”, ch. 12, in AVANAM, Vol. XXXVI, Coimbatore, 2025, pages 24-47. Issue published in July 2026.

The EFEO is inviting applications for its fieldwork grants for research stays in Asia during the first half of 2027. These grants are open to Master’s 2 students and PhD candidates in the humanities and social sciences working on the civilisations of South, South-East and East Asia.

Eligibility criteria, application procedures and operating rules are set out in detail on the Field Grants page of the EFEO website. The deadline for submitting applications is 15 October 2026 at 23:59 (Paris time) for a research stay scheduled to begin between 1 January and 30 June 2027.

The EFEO also offers the “David Ruegg” fieldwork grants, intended for students enrolled on a Master’s 2 programme or a PhD in Buddhist studies.

This scheme is subject to the same conditions and procedures as the EFEO’s fieldwork grants, as set out on the Fieldwork Grants page of the EFEO website. Applications must be submitted by 15 October 2026 at 11.59 pm (Paris time) for a fieldwork period due to commence between 1 January and 30 June 2027.

– Thuix Chazal is based at the Ho Chi Minh City Centre to carry out a study entitled “A Century Among the Xoơteă of Dak Ha: Ethnography and Ethnohistory of an Indigenous Village in the Highlands of Central Vietnam”

– Dewa Ayu Carma Citrawati is based at the Jakarta Centre to explore the topic “Developing a Knowledge Organisation System for Balinese Lontar Manuscripts through Metadata Research”

– Tsz Yan Ho is based at the Beijing Centre to work on the topic “From the Materiality to the Immateriality of Chariot Culture in Ancient China – a study of the functions of the chariot and its symbolic values for the living and the dead based on archaeological remains from the Zhou dynasty (1046–256 BC)”

– Marina Valente is based at the Seoul Centre to explore the topic “Korean health practices between 1821 and 1920: a historical study of cholera and the evolution of anti-epidemic strategies”

– Marie Vaudorne is affiliated with the Kyoto Centre to work on the topic “The evolution of the role of guilds of funeral rites specialists during imperial funerals in Japan, from the 7th to the 8th century”

– Huang Qingyang, recipient of a ‘David Ruegg’ fieldwork grant, is based at the Kyoto Centre, conducting research on “Late Indian Buddhist philosophers’ views on perceptual errors”

– Shuting Zhao is based at the Shanghai Centre for a study on “Private narratives, shared memories: An Ethnography of Family Photographs and Videos in China from the Post-Maoist Period to the Pre-Digital Era (1980–2010)”

– Zengle Zheng is based at the Hong Kong Centre to explore the topic “Everyday Leisure Practices among the Lower Classes in the Lingnan Region, 16th to Early 20th Century”

As part of their support for international mobility, the CNRS Humanities & Social Sciences and the EFEO are offering researchers, lecturer-researchers and research engineers from research units under the supervision or joint supervision of the CNRS financial support for research stays. The purpose of this funding is to help finance research stays lasting between 3 and 9 months during the 2027 calendar year.

The call for applications is open until 15 October 2026, midnight (Paris time).

The Director, Nicolas Fiévé, and the Director of Studies, Hugo David, are on a working visit to Italy (Rome and Naples) from 22 to 26 September to take part in the Annual Seminar of French Schools Abroad, organised this year by the French School in Rome and the Jean Bérard Centre in Naples.

Aurore Gilet joins the EFEO on 1 September as project manager for Hélène Njoto’s project: ‘Climate Change Threats to Heritage in Indonesia’. The project is funded by ALIPH for a period of three years. Having completed a multidisciplinary course in art history and public policy at the École du Louvre and Sciences Po Paris, and having gained experience at the Ministry of Culture, she will bring her skills in managing cultural projects and provide administrative support that will be crucial to the project’s successful delivery.

Yolanda Pinazo joins the EFEO on 1 September as an executive assistant. Her career, notably within several embassies and international organisations, has enabled her to develop solid experience in high-level assistance, coordination, event organisation and managing relations with French and international contacts. She has also spent several years working in the field of communications, notably at the US Embassy and in the press sector, where she developed strong writing and interpersonal skills. She will draw on this diverse experience to support the Management Team and will contribute in particular to the development of the EFEO’s internal and institutional communications.

Dominique Soutif will take up the post of Head Publications with effect from 1 September 2026. He succeeds Martin Nogueira Ramos, who had held the post since 1 September 2022.

Delphine Vinatier joins the EFEO on 1 September for a four-year term as Finance Director and Accounting Officer. With extensive experience in public administration and in higher education and research, she has previously served as Director of Administrative and Financial Affairs at CentraleSupélec and as Deputy Director-General of Services at the University of Orléans and the University of Poitiers. She has also served as Deputy Head of the Department for Financial Analysis of Higher Education Institutions at the central administration of the Ministry of Higher Education and Research, where her responsibilities included budgetary oversight and financial supervision of several institutions.

She will bring this expertise to the EFEO, in particular to strengthen the organisation’s financial management, support the modernisation of its practices and contribute to the management of its financial risks.

Andrew Hardy is to be posted to Hanoi from 1 September for a period of two years. He succeeds Philippe Le Failler, who has held the post since 1 September 2020. Mr Le Failler will now join the staff posted to France.

With effect from 1 September, Costantino Moretti has been posted to Shanghai for two years. He thus succeeds Guillaume Dutournier, who has been reassigned to Paris on the same date. Mr Dutournier had been based in Beijing since 1 April 2023.

Martin Nogueira Ramos has been posted to Tokyo with effect from 1 September for a period of three years. He succeeds Costantino Moretti, who has held the post since 1 September 2024.

The Paris Library will be closed on Monday 21 September as a one-off.

Consult the catalogues and digital tools :
– Catalogue of books and periodicals
– Catalogue of Archives and Manuscripts
– Digital heritage library

Check the EFEO’s Facebook page and Bluesky account regularly for any updates on the terms and conditions of the public reception service.

The new version of the Network of French Schools Abroad (ResEFE) website is now live.