Agenda

Centres

Beijing

As part of a new collaboration with Beijing Normal University (BNU), two researchers will be speaking in September to launch the activities of the new "Franco-Chinese Academic Platform on Civilisational Dialogue and Chinese Studies" hosted by the Jingshi Academy at BNU:

- Laurent Chircop-Reyes, senior lecturer at Bordeaux Montaigne University, for a lecture entitled "Oral narratives and ethnohistory of pedestrian mobility in northern China: the case of camel drivers and armed escorts (19th-early 20th centuries)", to be held on 8 September at 2pm at the Jingshi Academy of BNU;

- Alexis Chen, doctoral student at EHESS currently receiving a fieldwork grant from EFEO, for a lecture on his ongoing work: "Creativity and imagination in historical narrative: a reassessment of Gu Jiegang's research on ancient history through recently discovered texts"; the lecture will take place on the morning of 17 September at the Jingshi Academy of BNU.

Hong Kong

From 29 September to 7 December, the Centre welcomes Alice Bianchi, from Paris Cité University, for a research visit.

Jakarta

From 1 to 5 September, Zakariya Pamuji Aminullah, a doctoral student at the University of Hamburg, will be at the Centre to work with his thesis supervisor, Arlo Griffiths.

On 12 September, the Centre is organising a farewell dinner in honour of Ade Pristie Wisandhani, who retired in April after more than 25 years of service at the Centre. This dinner will also be an opportunity to introduce Alya Zahra Fauzy, the new assistant manager in charge of publications and the library.

Pondicherry

S.L.P. Anjaneya Sarma presents a paper entitled "Kr̥tātyayādhikaraṇavicāraḥ (Brahmasūtra Śāṅkarabhāṣye, 3.1.2)" at the MahāGaNapativākyārtha-sabhā, organised by the Sringeri Dakshinamaya Saradapeetham, Advaita Shodhakendram, from 1 to 8 September.

S.A.S. Sarma and Dominic Goodall participated in the conference Nagas and Territorial Deities in Monsoon Asia: Tantras, Mantras, and Worldly Rituals in Comparative Perspective, organised by the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Oxford University, from 19 to 21 September, as part of the MANTRATANTRAM (ERC Consolidator Grant 101124214) and MANTRAMS (ERC Synergy Grant 101118934) projects. S.A.S. Sarma's presentation is entitled "Nāga Rituals in Kerala: Gṛhyasūtra Traditions, Tantric Practices, and Folk Performances’; Dominic Goodall's presentation is entitled ‘Traces of Ophiolatry in the Literature of the Śaivasiddhānta II".

Paras Mehta will give an online lecture on Introduction to Sanskrit Grammar and Phonetics on 18 September. This lecture is organised by SIES College, Mumbai, as part of the National Education Policy (NEP) initiatives.

From 29 September to 11 October, Paras Mehta will travel to Heidelberg to collaborate with the Heidelberg team of the Hindu Temple Legends (HTL) project. He will give a presentation entitled "Kāñcīsthānamāhātmya: A Poetically Oriented Māhātmya Text" at ECSAS (European Conference for South Asian Studies) 2025, the 28th European conference on South Asian studies, to be held at the South Asia Institute of Heidelberg University from 1 to 4 October.

Taipei

François Lachaud (EFEO) is conducting research in Taiwan from 20 to 30 September as part of the annual exchange programme between the EFEO and the National Palace Museum (NPM, Gugong).

Thrissur Branch (Kerala)

Olga Nowicka (postdoctoral researcher, University of Hamburg and member of the DiPiKA project) will visit the French Institute in Pondicherry at the end of September to continue her reading of the Yatyācārasaṃgraha, a compendium of monastic rules in the Śaṅkarian hermit tradition of Kerala, with Mr Vinoth.

Researchers

Paola Calanca

From 19 to 22 September, Paola Calanca will participate in the symposium Research on Maritime Cultural Heritage around the China Seas organised by Xiamen University, where she will present a paper entitled "Naval knowledge as reflected in military handbooks (16th–19th centuries)".

On 25 and 26 September, Paola Calanca will participate in the maritime history symposium organised by Academia Sinica, where she will present a paper entitled "Qing naval forces officers' nautical knowledge".

Hugo David

From 15 to 17 September, Hugo David will visit the Academy of Sciences in Vienna (Institut für Kultur- und Geistesgeschichte Asiens) to participate in the workshop "From universals to ontological non-dualism. Reading Bhartṛhari’s Vākyapadīya 3.1.19–33", organised by Marco Ferrante (IKGA). This workshop will examine the initial results of the critical edition project of the Jātisamuddeśa, one of the main medieval Sanskrit texts dealing with the question of the expression of universals.

Guillaume Dutournier

Guillaume Dutournier joins the new EFEO Centre in Shanghai, hosted by Fudan University. His first task will be to oversee the installation of equipment in the premises and prepare for the Centre's inauguration.

Valérie Gillet

Valérie Gillet will be travelling to India from 8 September to 4 October. Together with Coline Lefrancq (CNRS/Arscan), Yohan Chabot (GéoArchéon) and N. Ramaswamy (EFEO assistant), she will visit the site of Narttamalai and its surroundings to continue fieldwork as part of a multidisciplinary project combining history, archaeology and geomorphology. The aim is to understand how ancient societies settled in a semi-arid environment and transformed the territory through the development of hydraulic works, agriculture, urban cities and trade networks. As Valérie Gillet is focusing on the epigraphy of the Narttamalai site, this mission is being managed by the ERC Dharma project.

Arlo Griffiths

Arlo Griffiths is travelling to Malaysia from 14 to 18 September with Malaysian speleologists to examine ancient graffiti in caves in the federal state of Ipoh.

Dominic Goodall

Dominic Goodall is participating in the 35th DOT (Deutscher Orientalistentag), held at Friedrich-Alexander University, Erlangen, from 8 to 12 September. He has been invited to give the keynote speech for the section devoted to Indian studies. His presentation is entitled: "Echoes of Indian poets (Bāṇa, Bhāravi, Daṇḍin and Kālidāsa) in the Political Poetry of Khmer Sanskrit Epigraphs".

Yves Goudineau

Benoît Jacquet

On 10 September, Benoît Jacquet will participate in a round table discussion on the theme of ‘Development and institutionalisation of cooperation between the museum and academic worlds’ during the Steering Committee meeting of the GIS aréaux Afrique, Asie et MOMM (African, Asian and MOMM research groups) at the Campus Condorcet Conference Centre.

On 23 September, Benoît Jacquet organises a workshop presenting traditional carpentry techniques with the Wood Construction Information Centre – Ligne Bois and carpenter Kaneko Ryōsei at the 2m26 workshop in Keikohu (Kyōto, Kita-ku).

François Lachaud

On 2 September, François Lachaud will participate in the CST for Laura Agnel's thesis, alongside Alain Arrault, Matthias Hayek and Vincent Goossaert.

Christophe Marquet

As part of the European Association for Japanese Studies conference held at Tōhoku University in Sendai, Japan, Christophe Marquet will speak on 20 September at a round table discussion on "Japanese studies scholars in Japan", alongside Andrea di Antoni (Italian School of East Asian Studies), Barbara G. Holthus (German Institute for Japanese Studies) and Thomas Garcin (UMIFRE 19-Maison franco-japonaise).

Pierre-Yves Manguin

Pierre-Yves Manguin will be in the Philippines from 16 to 23 September. At the invitation of the University of the Philippines, he will give an opening speech (Some thoughts on maritime cultures of Insular Southeast Asia) in Butuan (Mindanao) at the "Butuan Balangay International Conference: Archaeology, Culture, Language". He will then give a seminar in Manila at the School of Archaeology of the University of the Philippines on the shipmasters of ancient Southeast Asia.

Hélène Njoto

On 9 September, Hélène Njoto was invited by BRIN (Agency for Research and National Innovation, Indonesia) to give an online lecture entitled "Tumpeng Mosque, A Fragile Witness To The Arrival Of Islam In Southeast Asia".

Martin Nogueira Ramos

Martin Nogueira Ramos is on assignment in Tokyo from 1 to 21 September. He will visit the Kirishitan Bunko (Catholic collection) at Sophia University (Jōchi daigaku) to collect documentation on Franciscan and Dominican sources concerning Japan in the first half of the 17th century and to consult Japanese-language publications (periodicals and books) from the Paris Foreign Missions Society on interreligious competition during the Meiji era.

Catherine Scheer

Projects

CHAMPA Project

From 1 to 5 September, David Bazin will be at the EFEO headquarters in Paris to work at the geomatics laboratory with Vladyslav Sydorov and Adam Wijker, notably to coordinate the management of data collected during surveys, mapping and data visualisation, as well as planning surveys for 2025-2026. Lucie Harteaux (a third-year student at the École Supérieure des Ingénieurs Géomètres du Mans - ESGT) will be doing an internship from September to December 2025 at the geomatics laboratory in Vat Phou, Champassak. She will begin her internship with a week at the geomatics laboratory in Paris, with the participation of Vissa Chanthaphasouk.

The Vat Phou museum team continues to inventory and restore items from the museum and its reserves. Following the discovery of 79 Buddha statuettes (Keson Dok Mai) during the consolidation of the foundations of the Vat Meuang Kang library (see publication on the Vat Phou website), the museum team, under the supervision of David Bazin, will carry out a detailed photographic survey of the 32 inscriptions found on these statuettes. The study of these Keson Dok Mai will be conducted by Michel Lorrillard and Phongsathorn Buakhaphanh with the contribution of Sophie Biard.

The LiDAR team, led by David Bazin, continues to update data on surveyed archaeological sites and produce orthophotos of excavation sites (Nong Vienne, Phon That, Vat Song O), including GPR surveys and a report on flooding at the end of July 2025.

Bounsouang Senphaseuth, a Laotian engineer from the Vat Phou division, and two Laotian technicians, Vansouk Keophan and Kommalien Sivilay, will complete conservation work on the pinnacle of the Vat Meuang Kang library at the end of September, using techniques they learned during training earlier this year at the World Monuments Fund's Wat Chaiwatthanaram Conservation Project in Ayutthaya, Thailand.

Publications

This book introduces, edits and translates the Haṭhābhyāsappaddhati, an eighteenth-century Sanskrit manual on the practice of Haṭhayoga. Probably intended for personal use by practitioners, the manual provides uniquely detailed instructions on a range of topics, including the yogi’s hut, yama and niyama, ṣaṭkarma, prāṇāyāma and mudrā. The most important feature of the text, however, is it treatment of 112 āsanas, many of which are not found in other yoga texts. Some involve repetitive or sequential movements and others require the use of ropes. In the nineteenth century, a manuscript of the text found its way into the Mysore Palace, where it may have had an influence on modern yoga through the teachings of T. Krishnamacharya.

All EFEO publications are available on the publications website.

Researchers' publications

François Lachaud, "Omoide no Tōyō bunko" (Souvenirs du Tōyō bunko) in Tōyō bunko hyakunenshi (100 Year History of the Toyo bunko), Tōkyō, Toyo bunko, 2025, pages 331-332.

Christophe Marquet, "Variations sur le mont Fuji" and "La Manga de Hokusai : 'L’essence des choses' par le dessin", Dossiers de l’art, n° 330 : "Hokusai : exposition au château des Ducs de Bretagne", July 2025, pages 28-37 et pages 38-41.

Research Services

Recipients of allocation on mission

- Sett Paing Myo is based at the Chiang mai centre for a study on "Perspectives traditionnelles, transitionnelles et contemporaines de la masculinité et la situation du genre au Myanmar"

- Anna Pineda is based at the Jakarta centre for a study on "Technological Comparison of Palaeometallic Period Anthropomorphic Burial Jars and Pottery in Island Southeast Asia through Indonesia and the Philippines"

- Xinyue Wang is based at the Beijing centre for a study on "Nouveaux modèles agricoles, mobilités inter-régionales et vies économiques en ruralité. Étude d’une exploitation avicole en Chine contemporaine (Jiangxi-Sichuan)"

- Victor Wright is based at the Beijing centre for a study on "Restaurer le lac Poyang, interventions écologiques et devenir d’une société lacustre"

- Yijun Xie is based at the Taipei centre for a study on "De la puissance à l’acte : le culte des ong ya dans la société hokkien"

- Pratiwi Yuwono is based at the Jakarta centre for a study on "Mortuary practices, health, and diet of insular Wallacean populations since the Austronesian expansion: The case of the Kolana site on Alor Island, East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia"

Director

From 25 to 27 September, Nicolas Fiévé will travel to Rome to take part in celebrations marking 150 years of the French School in Rome at the Farnese Palace.

Staff

The title of her thesis is "De la matérialité à l’immatérialité de la culture du char dans la Chine ancienne : les fonctions et les valeurs symboliques du char pour les vivants et les morts à partir des vestiges archéologiques de la dynastie des Zhōu (1046 – 256 av. J.-C.)".

Her research is a continuation of her research dissertation in ancient history on "La conception, la fabrication et l’art de la conduite du char dans la Chine antique, de la période Yīn-Shāng à la dynastie Qín (1300 – 207 av. J.-C.)".

The aim of her thesis is to examine the place of the chariot in funerary and sacrificial contexts by drawing on archaeological, manuscript and literary sources. Her approach is based in particular on a corpus of sources that has been renewed by numerous recent archaeological excavations.

Éléonore Caro wishes to analyse two types of textual corpus: fragments containing medical prescriptions (found in tombs dating from the early Eastern Han dynasty, 25-220 CE) and administrative texts containing information that helps us understand how the medical system worked in garrisons and outposts located on the Empire's borders, such as reports on soldiers' health and inventories of medicine supplies. Through the analysis of these sources, she hopes to obtain three types of information: (A) what types of illnesses and injuries these prescriptions relate to, i.e. what people suffered from in the north-west during the Han dynasty; (B) what types of remedies were offered for these specific illnesses/injuries, and how were the necessary 'ingredients' for their preparation obtained; (C) who were the 'medical actors'.

Library

Photo Library

Of particular note

Réseau des Écoles françaises à l'Étranger

News from PSL Université Paris