Portraits of researchers at the Institut des Civilisations

At the Laboratoire d'anthropologie sociale, Charles Stépanoff studies the relationship between humans and non-humans, notably through shamanism and animal husbandry in Siberia : a relationship in which, contrary to popular belief, man is not always at the center.

The study of thousands of cuneiform tablets uncovered by archaeological digs sometimes overturns our visions of theAncient East and Mesopotamian civilization. Assyriologist Lionel Marti uses them to unravel the mysteries of the Assyrian Empire.

Claire-Akiko Brisset is director of the Japanese Civilization team at the CRCAO (Centre de recherche sur les civilisations de l'Asie orientale). Her work on texts, images and their interactions, sheds light on the specificities of Japanese civilization, notably in its particular relationship with the visual and the ambiguity of the sign.

Attached to Prof. François Déroche's History of the Koran. Text and Transmission of Prof. François Déroche, Clément Moussé is completing a thesis on prophet shrines in medieval Syria. Over the centuries, these shrines have been venerated by Jews, Christians and Muslims alike.

Despina Chatzivasiliou is a research engineer at the Institut des Civilisations - Mediterranean World Division.

Since September 2019, Despina Chatzivasiliou has been a research engineer at the Collège de France, associated with four chairs of the Institut des Civilisations (Jean-Pierre Brun, Techniques et économies de la Méditerranée antique ; Jean-Luc Fournet, Culture écrite de l'Antiquité tardive et papyrologie byzantine ; Dario Mantovani, Droit, culture et société de la Rome antique ; Vinciane Pirenne-Delforge, Religion, histoire et société dans le monde grec antique), whose main works deal with various aspects of Greco-Roman antiquity, based on extensive textual, iconographic and archaeological corpuses. Her doctoral thesis focused on archaic religious topography and the structuring of urban and peri-urban space in ancient cities and regions. Her fields of research are interdisciplinary: ancient sciences, archaeology, ancient history, history of religions, anthropology, topography, urbanization and the editing of ancient texts.
Despina Chatzivasiliou is closely involved in the projects of the Chairs of the Mediterranean Worlds cluster, and participates in publications, as well as in the expansion and exploitation of databases currently under development. A study of the history of the Collège de France and its early teachings, in close collaboration with the Archives, is currently underway.