François-Xavier Fauvelle was born in 1968. After completing post-graduate studies in philosophy and history, he defended his doctoral thesis in African history in 1999 at the University of Paris-I-Panthéon-Sorbonne, under the supervision of Jean Boulègue. In 2002, he was recruited by the CNRS and assigned to the Institut d'études africaines in Aix-en-Provence. During his career, he has spent several long periods abroad : in the USA in 1996-1997 (as " Scholar Affiliate " at the University of Iowa), in Ethiopia in 2000-2001 (as a post-doctoral researcher at the French Center for Ethiopian Studies in Addis Ababa), in South Africa in 2005-2006 (as a researcher at the French Institute of South Africa in Johannesburg), and again in Ethiopia in 2006-2009 (as Director of the French Center for Ethiopian Studies). Returning to France in 2009, he joined the TRACES Laboratory at the University of Toulouse-II-Jean-Jaurès. Together with François Bon and Caroline Robion-Brunner, he set up the Pôle Afrique, a team of Africanist archaeologists welcoming PhD students in African archaeology, particularly from African countries. Director of research second class (2009) then first class (2016), François-Xavier Fauvelle directed the TRACES Laboratory from 2013 to 2017, and in 2016, as president of the organizing committee, hosted the^23rd congress of the Society of Africanist Archaeologists. He will be elected Professor at the Collège de France in 2019.