Despite the constraints of confinement and teleworking, the EFEO continues, in France and in its centers in Asia, its research and teaching activities, and those of its administrative and research support services. I would like to thank all the researchers and staff for their mobilization in these difficult times. New initiatives have emerged, such as at the EFEO Centre in Kyoto, which was the first to offer its cycle of conferences by videoconference, with great success.

The month of May is shaping up in France as the month of a gradual resumption of mobility, which gives us hope. The EFEO is actively preparing its plan for a return to activity. However, we will not be in a position to open the Maison de l'Asie and its library to the public in the immediate future, but new arrangements will be proposed from June onwards for access to documentary resources, pending a return to normal at the beginning of September.

This context also allows us to become aware of the importance of digital resources and publications, a subject on which the network of French Schools Abroad is currently working. Thanks to the library team, the EFEO's HAL collection has been considerably enriched and offers greater visibility to our publications.

We have chosen to present to you in this letter the activities of several archaeological worksites in Cambodia and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, as well as the major European projects, CRISEA and DHARMA, which mobilize many of our researchers and their collaborative networks.

Christophe Marquet
Directeur de l’EFEO

Legend: Angkor Wat temple in Siem Reap province in Cambodia: March 2019 left, March 2020 right. Photograph by Tang Chhin Sothy/AFP/Getty Images © The Guardian.

As part of the Kyoto lectures, Paul Kreitman (University of Columbia) presents: "Japan's Ocean Borderlands: Nature and Sovereignty".

At 6 p.m. (Japan time). The conference will take place online, on the Zoom platform. The password for logging in will be posted on the Kyoto Center's blog and on the EFEO and ISEAS websites the day before.

Taking advantage of the closure of the National Museum of Cambodia to the public, the museum's sculpture conservation-restoration workshop (EFEO) is moving and arranging works in the rooms.

Legend: Installation of the bronze statue of Reclining Vishnu (Ga5327) from the Western Mebon in the southeast wing of the museum.

As part of the ModAThom (Explanatory Model of the Angkor Thom Formation) program funded by the ANR, Jacques Gaucher led an excavation campaign at the Royal Palace of Angkor Thom between December 24th 2019 and March 30th 2020. The purpose of this campaign, in which Ms LIM Kannitha, Messrs LIM Hak, PHORN Vibol and SO Pot and over thirty workers took part, was to continue the architectural, stratigraphic and sedimentary documentation of the various stages of periodization of Angkor Thom Palace now established by Jacques Gaucher. Excavations were carried out on the three sites chosen for the construction of this periodization: the palace enclosure, in this case the northeastern entrance pavilion, the northern basin of the Phimeanakas and the Phimeanakas temple site.

Legend: Angkor Thom, Royal Palace, northeast entrance pavilion.

Legend: Photo of the kick-off with all the members of the project.

The European project CRISEA (Competing Regional Integrations in Southeast Asia), which started in November 2017, is now in its third and final year. At the request of the management of the EFEO, the institution piloting the project, the European Commission has just accepted its extension until February 2021 to allow for the postponement of research missions and activities (colloquia planned in Jakarta, Brussels, etc.) that had to be interrupted because of Covid-19. This project, which brings together some 70 researchers in a consortium of 13 European and South-East Asian institutions, aims to question the current reality of regional integration in South-East Asia by crossing disciplines and perspectives, ranging from the "micro" (historical, ethnological, sociological and localized case studies) to the "macro" (geopolitical and economic analyses). See a more detailed presentation on the EFEO website or on the project website.

Legend: Photo from the Research Workshop held in Chiang Mai in February 2020.

After a period of implementation (initial meeting at the EFEO-Chiang Mai), with the constitution of methodological frameworks by research areas (work packages), the project has been in the middle of field missions and data collection for several months. Initial results have been presented at colloquia or meetings aimed at a wider audience (diplomats, NGOs, journalists, etc.), some of which have already been published in the form of working notes or online policy briefs. Among the main events organised by the project were the following:

- Three research workshops bringing together all members of the project to discuss ongoing research: Hanoi (March 2018), Naples (May 2019) and Chiang Mai (February 2020 - see below).

- Four dissemination workshops based on major themes, some of which were organised with local EU delegations: Identity (Manila, February 2019), Economy (Kuala Lumpur, July 2019), Environment (Chiang Mai, December 2019), State (Mandalay and Yangon, February 2020).

- Several presentations by CRISEA members at the 4th Conference of the Italian Association for South-East Asian Studies (ItaSeas), Naples, May 2019.

- Organisation of five workshops by CRISEA members at the 10th Conference of the European Association for Southeast Asian Studies (EuroSEAS) in Berlin (September 2019), as well as a round table on Current and future challenges of regional integration in Southeast Asia (Yves Goudineau, Jacques Leider, Sophie Boisseau du Rocher, Tomasz Kaminski, Volker Grabowsky, and Pietro Masina).

- Three meetings at the European Commission in Brussels (policy briefing sessions) at the invitation of the South-East Asia Division of the European External Action Service (EEAS), on the themes: "China's influence on South-East Asia" (June 2018); "Identities: issues at the crossroads of politics, violence and the problem of social formations" (December 2019) and "The state and the future of liberalism and democracy in South-East Asia: Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia" (January 2019).

The 3rd CRISEA scientific colloquium was held in Chiang Mai last February from the 5th to the 7th, just before the Covid-19 pandemic which led to the closure of borders. This important event brought together 60 researchers, i.e. almost all the members of the project. They were able to acquaint themselves with the latest advances in the project during a plenary session organized at the University of Chiang Mai in the presence of Christophe Marquet, Director of the EFEO, and Professor Rome Chiranukrom, Vice-President of the University. They then met at the EFEO Center in working groups according to the various thematic axes (work packages) in order to exchange views on their respective results and to discuss the collective publications planned for the end of the project in the form of books or special issues of journals.

Legend: The inscription of Gunung Nyamil, in Blitar, East Java, Indonesia. Photograph by Eko Bastiawan.

Since May 2019 several EFEO teacher-researchers have been carrying out research as part of the DHARMA project: The Domestication of "Hindu" Asceticism and the Religious Making of South and Southeast Asia, a Synergy program financed by the European Research Council (ERC) obtained by the EFEO in collaboration with colleagues from the UMR CEIAS (CNRS-EHESS), Humboldt University Berlin, and the University of Naples - "L'Orientale".

A multidisciplinary research program involving the study of inscriptions, literary and prescriptive texts, and also including archaeological excavation campaigns, the DHARMA project aims to define the process of the "institutionalization" of Hinduism between the 6th and 13th centuries, from South Asia to Southeast Asia, by examining in depth the role of actors as different as kings, notables, and local communities.

Legend: Adeline Levivier, Ryosuke Furui and Arlo Griffiths during the documentation mission of the inscribed pillar of Badal (north-western Bangladesh).

The teacher-researchers involved for the EFEO are Véronique Degroot (Jakarta), Valérie Gillet (Paris), Dominic Goodall (Pondicherry), Arlo Griffiths (Paris), Dominique Soutif (Bangkok), and Vincent Tournier (Paris). Their research in the framework of DHARMA concerns the editing of various epigraphic corpuses (from Tamil, Khmer and Cam countries, Bengal, Andhra, Soumatra, Java and Bali), the editing of Sanskrit and Javanese texts from manuscripts as well as archaeological excavations (in Cambodia and Indonesia). The project has also made it possible to recruit several young colleagues in Paris, including two doctoral students (Chloé Chollet, Aditia Gunawan), an engineer (Adeline Levivier) and a post-doctoral student (Yohan Chabot), as well as the affiliation of several colleagues for the duration of the project to the centres in Jakarta, Pondicherry and Siem Reap. Collaborators in Cambodia (Kunthea Chhom, Cchunteng Hun, Socheat Chea), India (Babu M. Ramaswamy) and Indonesia (Eko Bastiawan) are carrying out various tasks for the project: digitization of publications, documentation of field inscriptions, their encoding in TEI-EpiDoc format, excavation management, etc. All the participants in the project, from near and far, are presented on the project's "people" page.

Legend: Two inscriptions by Devatideva, who ruled in what is now the Chittagong region (south-eastern Bangladesh) in the 8th century. Photographs by Adeline Levivier (tablet) and Arlo Griffiths (vase).

Some EFEO teacher-researchers devote their seminars or organize working sessions, both in Paris and Pondicherry, to the collegial study of inscriptions that will be included in the future project database. Thus Valérie Gillet, together with the other specialists in Tamil epigraphy present in the Paris region, has held bi-monthly encoding sessions. Arlo Griffiths, for his part, led these sessions with his doctoral students working on corpus from Southeast Asia. This year, he devoted a seminar to the reading of Sanskrit inscriptions from Bengal and Java and another to the publication of Kamahāyānan Mantranaya, a manual of initiation to Buddhist Tantrism, in Sanskrit and old Javanese. Vincent Tournier reads with his students inscriptions in Middle Indian and Sanskrit from various Buddhist sites of the Deccan, and has notably prepared a new edition of the 320 inscriptions of Kanaganahalli, a major site of the period sātavāhana. Dominic Goodall leads sessions in Pondicherry to read Sanskrit inscriptions from Cambodia, a large literary inscription in Tamil from Trichy, for which Indra Manuel is preparing a first English translation, as well as Naimittikriyānusandhāna, a code of conduct for cenobites śivaïtes. The weekly reading sessions of the project's Pondicherry team (S.A.S. Sarma, S.L.P. Anjaneya Sarma, Vijayavenugopal, Indra Manuel and R. Sathyanarayanan), in which colleagues from Vienna, Siem Reap, Hamburg, Oxford and Naples also participate, have been maintained by videoconference since the confinement, as have all the other seminars mentioned above.

Before the health crisis intervened, the EFEO teams of DHARMA were able to carry out several missions to document inscriptions in India and Bangladesh, as well as excavations at the temple of Prasat Khna in Cambodia. Three missions were also carried out at the University Library of Leiden to catalogue the large collection of Indonesian inscriptions preserved there. A workshop on an important Sanskrit inscription, probably related to the Preah Khan of Kompong Svay, was held in the center of Siem Reap in January. Excavations at Bumiayu (Southern Soumatra, Indonesia) that should have started in June unfortunately had to be postponed.

The project maintains an increasingly extensive notebook and the first publications are available on the project's HAL page. The data that will feed the project's database is available for free access via the project's GitHub page.

Legend: MAK. Yu Royal Tomb, Kaesong, time of Koryŏ. Surveys taken on August 28, 2019 © MAK (EFEO/NAPCH).

The French-North Korean Archaeological Mission in Kaesong (MAK)

The Franco-North Korean Archaeological Mission in Kaesong (MAK), headed by Elisabeth Chabanol, was created in 2011 under the aegis of the Consultative Commission for Archaeological Research Abroad of the Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs on the basis of the research work carried out since 2005 on the Kaesong site in close collaboration between the École française d'Extrême-Orient and the National Authority for the Protection of Cultural Heritage (NAPCH) of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. With the exception of intermittent inter-Korean excavations on the site of the Royal Palace at Manwŏltae (Kaesong), it is the only foreign team operating in North Korea.

Legend: MAK. Excavation of the Great Southern Gate at Kaesong, team of the 11000 and 12000 boreholes. May 13, 2015 © MAK (EFEO/NAPCH).

The project is based on a historical and urban issue relating to the city walls of Kaesong, capital of the kingdom of Koryŏ (918-1392) and the very beginning of the kingdom of Chosŏn (1392-1395, 1399-1405). The research programme, which began in the autumn of 2011, focuses on the surrounding walls and is divided into two complementary and distinctly different types of investigation: a descriptive inventory of the walls in order to produce a detailed cartography associated with a descriptive catalogue and a study of monumental archaeology; and the excavation of elements of the fortress, including the Great Southern Gate, a symbolic element of the most recent wall, the Inner Wall. Parallel to these operations, with the implementation of a new four-year project in 2019, as part of the study of the integration of the capital into its environment and in view of the initiation of research on the royal tombs of Koryŏ, a cartographic study of the tombs in the Kaesong region has been initiated. This preliminary work has clarified the distribution of the royal tombs all around the capital city of Kaesong and its walls. Two tombs were selected for archaeological excavation: the tomb attributed to the 30th king, Chungjŏng (r. 1349-1351), and that of the 16th king, Yejong (r. 1105-1122). Both are located near the Outer Wall to the south, not far from the Konam Gate. The last preparatory surveys for the excavation of the oldest tomb were carried out in September 2019 and architectural and archaeological surveys of the fortress in October 2019. This was followed by post-excavation work at the Central Museum of Korean History in Pyongyang.

Legend: Part of the MAK team during the third excavation campaign of the Great South Gate in Kaesong, in front of the sign inscribing the site on the UNESCO World Heritage List. May 9, 2014 © MAK/EFEO/NAPCH.

MAK's field operations are supplemented by archival research north and south of the 38th parallel and by studies along three axes. The first concerns the history of the site's archaeological and museographic institutions, in conjunction with the NAPCH (privileged during this period of border closure); the second focuses on the notion of the heritage of the Kaesong site, with the participation of teacher-researchers from Paris-Diderot, the EHESS and the Seoul National University; the last is devoted to the constitution of a Korean-English-French Lexicon of archaeological, art history and architectural terms (South and North Korean terminologies), a necessary tool for the training of Western and North Korean members of the MAK programme as well as Koreanology students.

Legend: Seoul Colloquium in Korean Studies/ANR CITY-NKOR. EFEO Center in Seoul. May 10, 2018. Annie Pedret, Lecturer, Seoul National University, "Spatial Futures: Pyongyang 2050" © EFEO.

Since January 2018 this research on the urban development of the Kaesong site has been part of the "CITY-NKOR Ville, architecture et urbanisme en Corée du Nord" project of the "Défi des autres savoirs" program of the National Research Agency, a project in which the EHESS and the EFEO are partners. In addition to the training workshops for North Korean archaeologists and historians organized by the EFEO since 2008 at the Siem Reap Center in Cambodia, a series of seminars on the architecture and urban planning of North Korean cities has been held at the EFEO Center in Seoul.

The EFEO's HAL Collection now contains more than 1,000 references, nearly 400 of them in full text.

The photographic holdings of the EFEO remain accessible on the photo library website.

Caption: EFEO_CAM05223, Aerial view of Angkor Wat, background Angkor Thom, taken in 1932.

Created by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres in memory of the sinologist Flora Blanchon, these two research assistance schemes offer young researchers in history, art history or archaeology of China and neighbouring countries:

- an annual prize to help publish a thesis on the Far East.

- assistance to doctoral students or young post-doctoral researchers who have to travel to carry out their research (library, archives, documentation centre, museums, etc.).

The deadline for sending applications is 22 May 2020 (midnight).

Due to the constraints arising from the containment measures currently in force, applications for this prize may be sent exclusively in electronic form.

All information on how to apply can be found here.

As part of the support provided for international cooperation activities, the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation (MESRI) awards five doctoral contracts each year in partnership between a Doctoral School and one of the five French Schools Abroad (EFE).

Due to the current health crisis, the application deadlines for the MESRI Doctoral Contracts arrowed EFE, 2020-2023, have been extended.

The conditions remain unchanged but candidates who have already submitted their application may, if they deem it necessary, update it and send a new version by May 17. Applications received remain registered. The arbitrations will, as initially planned, be rendered during the month of June.

The details and procedure for submitting applications for each School can be consulted here.

The application documents can be sent until May 17, 2020, 3:00 pm (Paris time), according to the procedures specific to each EFE. Results will be sent before the end of June.

The 2020 PSL Masters recruitment campaign is open.

Concerning the "Asian Studies" master's degree, applications for the "History, Philology and Religion" (EPHE-EFEO) course are to be submitted online from 25 February. Those in the "History and Social Sciences: Fields, Texts and Images" (EHESS-EFEO) program will be able to submit their applications online from May 15.