Agenda

Centres

Chiang Mai 

Phnom Penh

Pondicherry

S.L.P. Anjaneya Sarma and Dominic Goodall will participate in a colloquium on faults in Sanskrit poetry ('The Kāvyadoṣas') organised by M. Vinoth at the French Institute of Pondicherry on August 4 to 5. S.L.P. Anjaneya Sarma will give a paper on the notion of rasa-doṣa; Dominic Goodall will speak on the impact of rhetoricians' classification of “poetic faults” on the transmission of works of poetry.

T. Rajarethinam will present two lectures entitled “Textual variations in the editions of Naṟṟiṇai” and "Textual variations in the editions of  Akanāṉūṟu" on June 9 during the course of the workshop on “Textual variations in the editions of Classical Tamil language and Literature" organized by the Central Institute of Classical Tamil in Chennai.

R. Sathyanaryanan has been invited to present a lecture on “Revival of the eternal Indian Glory: Sanskrit and French as Global Ambassadors” at the A.M. Jain College in Chennai on August 3.

Justin Henry (Georgia College & State University, USA), who joined the EFEO this summer as an American Institute for Indian Studies short-term fellow, will complete a 3-month stay at the Pondicherry Centre in August. Following up on his first book on the Ramayana tradition in Sri Lanka (OUP USA, 2022), Henry is continuing research on exchange of Tamil folklore, drama, and musical tradition between India and Sri Lanka, along with points of interface between Sinhala and Tamil speakers in the pre- and early modern periods. He is also working on a general audience book on 'alternative perspectives on the Ramayana' for publication in India.

Sandeep Kalyan Subramanian, doctoral student at the University of Hamburg, is a recipient of the EFEO field grant for a 3-months research in India as part of his research project "A survey on the feasability of non supervised algorythms for the auto-recognition of caracters and the paleographic exploration of south indian manuscripts". 

Victor D’Avella, from the University of Oxford will be visiting the Pondicherry Centre of the EFEO for a period of one month in August to continue studying texts about the grammar of Sanskrit and Tamil including the Taṇṭiyalaṅkāram, Vārarucasaṃgraha, and Vīracōḻiyam.

Joseph Badawi-Crook, doctoral student from the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa will spend 2 months (July and August) at the Pondicherry Centre of the EFEO to continue work on his thesis on “A Genealogy of Omens, Bards, and Texts in early Sanskrit and Greek poetry, and in particular the Rig-Veda, Sanskrit Epic, Homer, and Hesiod”.

Lucy May Constantini, doctoral student from The Open University, will be coming to Pondicherry in July to pursue work with Dr. S.A.S. Sarma on her project “Practice and Text in the South Indian Martial Art Kaḷarippayaṟṟ˘: confluence, contradiction, evolution”.

Florinda De Simini ("L’Orientale", Naples) and Margherita Trento (EHESS) are coming to the Centre in July to continue their research, notably within the framework of the Śivadharma project (ERC n° 803624).

Seoul

Siem Reap

On Friday, July 1, the EFEO Center in Siem Reap will welcome twenty student curators from the APSARA National Authority as part of a new training program organized by the APSARA Stone Conservation Unit with the support of the Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ). They will then be made aware of the EFEO's archives, in particular those of the Angkor Conservation Unit for the period between 1908 and 1975.

Researchers

Alain Arrault

Élisabeth Chabanol

Hugo David

On August 2, Hugo David will give a lecture entitled "Contribution of French scholarship to the study of ancient India" in the department of French of the A.M. Jain College, Chennai, on the invitation of Prof. V. Radha

Nicolas Fiévé

Yves Goudineau

Benoît Jacquet

From July 2 to 17, Benoît Jacquet will participate in the summer workshops of the École spéciale d'architecture (Paris) and the Meiji University in Japan (Tōkyō), with a group of 15 students and 4 teachers, including Frank Salama (ESA) and Manuel Tardits (Meiji University)

From August 5 to 20, Benoît Jacquet will be in Kyōto for the realization of the "Ki-Time" project and the construction workshops of wooden pavilions that will be erected in the garden of the French Institute of Kansai-Kyōto and at the Villa Kujoyama. He will supervise, with Kimura Hiroyuki (KIT), Komiyama Yosuke (Kyōto University), Aoshima Keita (Otemon gakuin University), Miyake Riichi (Archi-Depot), Nicolas Ziesel (KOZ architects-ENSAPL), Trung Doan The and Bui Phuong Ngoc (Hanoi University of Civil Engineering), a group of 7 architects and engineers (ENSTIB), 2 Vietnamese students and 10 students from Kyōto universities.

Fabienne Jagou

Gregory Kourilsky

On July 16, Gregory Kourilsky will take part in an event organised at the Siam Society (Bangkok) around the publication of two books, one edited and the other co-edited by Ashley Thompson (SOAS): Early Theravādin Cambodia: Perspectives from Art and Archaeology (NUS Press) and Routledge Handbook of Theravāda Buddhism (with Stephen C. Berkwitz). Her talk will be entitled "Filial Piety: Shades of Difference across Theravādin traditions".

Costantino Moretti

Costantino Moretti is invited to the University of Hamburg - Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures (CSMC) until August 6 to participate in a research project in the framework of the Cluster of Excellence "Understanding Written Artefacts".

He is participating in the international conference Standardisation of Written Artefacts in East Asia, organised by the University of Hamburg - Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures (CSMC) and the National Taiwan University, Hamburg, from August 17 to 19. He will present a paper entitled "Standards and 'Codicological Trends' in Chinese Translations of Buddhist Scriptures".

Frank Muyard

Frank Muyard is participating in the History and Practice of Archaeology in the Chinese Cultural Sphere conference held at Oxford University from  August 22 to 25 , where he is giving a paper entitled 'Taiwan archaeology: in and out of Chinese archaeology'.

Hélène Njoto

Hélène Njoto will go to Ambon with the French Ambassador to Indonesia and East Timor, Olivier Chambard, for a presentation of the ALIPH project carried out by the EFEO Center in Jakarta (restoration of the Wapauwe Mosque).

Bertrand Porte

As part of the Champa project, Bertrand Porte went to southern Laos from June 14 to 23. He met with David Bazin (EFEO Champassak), Vissa Chanthaphasouk (architect, EFEO doctoral student), and Isabelle Magueur (technical assistant for the project) to meet with the local authorities, managers, and staff of the Vat Phu site museum and the Savannakhet provincial museum with a view to rehabilitation, extensions (organization of storage and conservation areas), and museum programming, as well as for training in conservation-restoration. Visits to Vientiane at the beginning and end of the stay provided an opportunity to discuss the project with Michel Lorillard.

Bertrand Porte is currently working on an unpublished translation of a long account of the transfer of pre-Angkorian statues, pedestals and inscriptions from the sites of Phnom Da and Angkor Borei (flood plain, southern Cambodia) to the Phnom Penh Museum by Kam Doum, Secretary General of the Buddhist Institute and then of the Phnom Penh Museum (Kampuchea Soriya, 1945).

The text will soon be published in three separate editions, in Khmer, French and English, each accompanied by a presentation and notes.

Catherine Scheer

Catherine Scheer is on mission in Thailand and Cambodia from July 11 to August 15, visiting the Payap University archives and Mondulkiri for a brief ethnographic fieldwork.

Brice Vincent

As part of the History curriculum of the Manusastra - Université des Moussons project, Brice Vincent will be in Phnom Penh from July 4 to 26 to give a lecture entitled "Protohistory and the first States of Southeast Asia" to undergraduate students. The tutorials will be given by Dy Phanet (Toulouse - Jean Jaurès University), Suon Sopheaktra (Royal University of Fine Arts), and Suong Sokro (INALCO).

Publications

All EFEO publications are available on the publications website.

Researchers' publications

Dominic Goodall, "On mantrasaṃhitā, śivaikādaśikā and related expressions: A note on awareness of mantras of the Mantramārga in the Śivadharma corpus" in Śivadharmāmṛta. Essays on the Śivadharma and its Network, Florinda Simini and Csaba Kiss (eds), Studies on the History of Śaivism II. Napoli: UniorPress, 2021, p. 61-71.

Krishnaswamy Nachimuthu, "Tamilar Pulamai Marapin Erramum Irakkamum (The High and Low in Tamil Scholarship)" in Talam-A Journal on Art and Literature, N° 23 April-June 2022, p. 27-31.

Krishnaswamy Nachimuthu, "An enquiry into the authorship of the Tamil Civatarumōttaram and its commentary" in Śivadharmāmṛta. Essays on the Śivadharma and its Network, Florinda Simini and Csaba Kiss (éds), Studies on the History of Śaivism II. Napoli: UniorPress, 2021, p.145-182.

Research Services

Recipients of allocation currently on mission

- Vy Cao is in Ho Chi Minh City for a study entitled "Printers and Publishing Houses in the Mekong Delta. Networks of production and circulation of printed matter in the 20th century"

- Thomas Claré is in Vietnam for a fieldwork at the national archives related to his research on opium smuggling in French Indochina: networks, flows and territories of illicit trade (1858-1954)

- Riyanto Geger is in Jakarta, for a study entitled "Actual and Mythical History in Migrant-Autochthonous Community Relationship in Seram, Eastern Indonesia"

- Valentina Grillo is in Bangladesh, for a study entitled "Living Outside Camps: the (Ir)Regular Life of Refugee Women from Myanmar"

- Cansu Gurkaya is in Pondicherry and Auroville, for a study on the representations and practices of citizenship in Auroville (India)

- Camille Senepin is going to Vietnam, for a research entitled "Towards a heritage hegemony? Political and cultural dynamics of a Vietnamese possession cult seen from two peripheral centres: the Tứ phủ in Nam Định and Huế".

Recipients of allocation on mission in July or August

- Mohamed Belhadj for a project in Kyoto on hospitality and cosmopolitanism: an ethnography of the 'Muslim friendly' phenomenon in contemporary Japan

- Vissa Chanthapasouk for a project in Siem Reap on Wat Phu in Laos: From the archaeology of a temple to the architecture of a site

- Fansuri Hamzah for a project in Jakarta, entitled "Identity and piety in contemporary Indonesian Islam: hijrah phenomenon among urban Muslims

- Sunny Le Galloudec for a project in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, focusing on the port-city of Đà Nẵng (Turan), from the Pacific War to the end of the Việt Nam War (1941-1975)

- Sandeep Subramanian for a project in Pondicherry, entitled "An Investigation into the Feasibility of Unsupervised Algorithms for Automatic Character Recognition and Paleographic Exploration of South Indian Manuscripts".

Post-doctoral fellow currently under contract

Maria Mélanie Chauveau, 5 months for a study entitled "Territorialité Bishnoï et enjeu identitaire. La transformation des terres agricoles dans les zones arides du Rajasthan : recomposition des espaces et mutations des relations entre humains, animaux et végétaux".

Library

Photo Library

Of particular note

Réseau des Écoles françaises à l'Étranger

News from PSL Université Paris

News from EURICS