SCIENTIFIC COUNCIL
Stéphane Dudoignon
A former Fellow of the French Institute of Central Asian Studies (1994-97), Lavoisier Research Fellow of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1997-98), JSPS Invited Scholar at the University of Tokyo (1998-2000), S. A. Dudoignon is since 2000 a Senior Research Fellow in the CNRS and since 2009 Associated Researcher in the University of Amsterdam. Since 2008 he edits the Central Eurasian Reader, a biennial English-language journal of critical bibliography and epistemology of modern and contemporary Central Eurasian studies (published in Berlin, at Klaus Schwarz). Since 1997 he holds regular seminars on the history of the Islamic religious personnel in Central Asia and the Middle East in the School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS) of Paris. He also translates modern and contemporary Russian, Iranian, Central Asian and Caucasian literatures.
Anne Ducloux
Anne Ducloux is an anthropologist. After studying law (PhD in 1981) and history (PhD in History of Ideas and Religions in 1992), she taught the history of religions in Antiquity at the University of Paris-XII before studying religious and social anthropology in post-colonial Muslim countries from 1999 onwards.
After four months in Kabylia, she spent six years in Uzbekistan, in complete immersion, observing family rituals, healing rituals and participating in the social life of her host family, while teaching at the University of Samarkand. Since 2010, she returns in the field two or three times a year, according to the visas issued by the Uzbek authorities. She spent in total twelve years of research in and on Uzbekistan.
In Uzbekistan, where the separation between men and women is impermeable and where relations between men are difficult to apprehend by a woman, even a Western woman, Anne Ducloux has chosen to limit her research to the world of women.
Alexandre Papas
Born in 1973, Alexandre Papas is a historian of Islam and Central Asia. He graduated in philosophy at the Sorbonne University, and holds diplomas in Persian, Turkish and Mongolian from the Institute of Oriental Languages & Civilizations, and a PhD in history from the EHESS in 2004. In 2006, he received the award of Best PhD Dissertation from the Institute for the Study of Islam and Societies of the Muslim World. His work deals mainly with Sufi mysticism, saint veneration and politico-religious issues in Central Asia and the neighboring areas (China, Tibet, and Northern India) from the 16th century to present. He is a research fellow at the CNRS since October 2007. He has been a visiting assistant professor at the Kyoto University (summer 2007), the Ohio State University (winter and spring 2008) and the American University of Paris (spring 2009). In 2012, he has been awarded the CNRS Bronze Medal for Modern History.
He is co-editor of the Encyclopaedia of Islamic Mysticism, Leiden, Brill.
He is the consultant of the Henry Luce Foundation Project “Annotated Turki Manuscripts Online” directed by Arienne Dwyer (Kansas University) and Michael Sperberg-McQueen (Black Mesa Technologies): https://uyghur.ittc.ku.edu
Katia Buffetrille
Katia Buffetrille is Associate Researcher at Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes. She graduated in Tibetan from the Institute of Oriental Languages & Civilizations and holds a PhD in Ethnology at Paris X - Nanterre University. She has dedicated all her time to document the rituals, pilgrimages and cults in Tibet. Since 2004, she has been directing the paper "Etudes mongoles, sibériennes, centrasiatiques et tibétaines" and its supplement "Nord-Asie" since 2009. She holds regular seminars on the Tibet and owns one of the largest collection of slides and documents on Tibetan rituals and pilgrimages.
David A. Palmer
Dr David A. Palmer is an Associate Professor and Chair of the department of Sociology at the University of Hong Kong, which he joined in 2008. A native of Toronto, he graduated from McGill University in Anthropology and East Asian Studies, then obtained his MPhil in Psychology and Ethnopsychiatry at the Georges Devereux clinic for migrant families of the University of Paris-VIII.
After completing his PhD in the Anthropology of Religion at the Institute for Advanced Research in Paris (Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Sorbonne), he was the Eileen Barker Fellow in Religion and Contemporary Society at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and, from 2004 to 2008, director of the Hong Kong Centre of the French School of Asian Studies (Ecole Française d’Extrême-Orient), located at the Institute for Chinese Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
He has published several award-winning books articles, journal issues and edited volumes on Chinese religion, modern Daoism, the Baha’i Faith, and modern religious movements.
His current research projects focus on local ritual traditions, transnational religious movements, and on faith-based volunteering and NGOs in the Chinese world and Southeast Asia.
He leads the “Rethinking Spirituality and Religion in Asia” research cluster at the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences, and the “Spiritual Values in the Third Sector” knowledge exchange project of the HKU Faculty of Social Science’s ExCEL3 third sector capacity building initiative.
Stéphanie Homola
Stéphanie Homola is a Post-doctoral fellow, Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange.
Visiting Scholar, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin (Department III, Artefacts, Action, and Knowledge) & Erlangen-Nuremberg University (IKGF): joint- project “Accounting for Uncertainty: Prediction and Planning in Asia’s History”. She graduated from ESSEC Business School and in Chinese from the Institute of Oriental Languages & Civilizations and holds a PhD in Social Anthropology at EHESS (Knowing fate: an anthropology of contemporary divinatory practices in China and Taiwan).
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RESEARCH FIELDS: anthropology of knowledge, anthropology of religion, anthropology of memory, cognitive anthropology, divination, destiny, Chinese religions, popular science
Main fieldwork: Taipei, Beijing, Kaifeng
Mehmet Emin
Mehmet Emin is a research associate and PhD student at Nevsehir Hacı Bektas Veli Üniversitesi, in Turkey. His thesis relates to "Applied Folklore in dichotomy of self-orientalism and authenticity and case of Nevsehir." He has already worked on folk medicine practices, folk beliefs and folk healers in the context of protection of intangible cultural heritage in Nevsehir and on Crimean Tatars.
Ruslan Rahimov
Ruslan Rahimov is Associate Professor at the American University of Central Asia (AUCA) in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. He holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS), Paris, France (co-tutelle program), “Transformation of Kyrgyz Nomadism in the 1920-30-s in the Works of Western Researchers”. His works and research interests are the pastoral societies of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan (nomadism and socialism), transnationalism, migration in Central Asia and Russia, anthropological theory and research methodology, sociological theory, anthropology of South-East Asia.
Chao Wang
Chao WANG is Assistant Professor in the Northwest Ethnology Center at Shaanxi Normal University in China. He received his Ph.D. in the Ethnology from Shaanxi Normal University in 2010. His research interests in recent years include the history and contemporary Islam on Hui Muslim in China; the problem and action on religion in China; the relation between Islam and Christianity in Northwest of China in 1840-1949. He has published more than ten papers in Journal of Shaanxi Normal University, Oversea Chinese History Studies, Religions in China, Muslims in China, etc. His current projects includes “The Acculturation of the Transnational Immigrant in the Main Stream Cultural Background” and “The Social Function and Role of the Religion in China.”
Tolik Gadomamadov
Tolik Gadomamadov was born in 1964. In 1989 he graduated from the faculty of Mass Culture and TV Production of the Tajik Institute of Culture, Dushanbe, Tajikistan. He is a Film director and scriptwriter.
He organizes several festivals such as the Roof of the World festival in Khorog and the Water festival. He is Pamiri and lives in Khorog, Pamir, Tajikistan.
Brief Filmography:
Television Art Film: “Howl hate” (1991, film director)
Comedian Film “New Year Is Not Coming” (1991, screenwriter and film director) Documentary film “Fire Worship” (1992)
Documentary film “Great Game” (1997, film director)
Anthropology film “Shougun” (2011, film director)
Documentary film “Praying through Water” (2014, film director)