After having obtained a Master in Precolumbian archaeology (on Maya writing system) in Paris-La Sorbonne, I moved to social anthropology and Papua New Guinea. My first fieldtrip took place in 1985 among the Baruya (3 months with a last trip in 2010) and then from 1987 to 2018 onwards among a southern Anga group, the Ankave (for a total of 28 months). In 1987-1988, I worked mainly with women and wrote a doctoral dissertation (1993; supervisor M. Godelier) linking together aspects of gender, kinship, life-cycle rituals and exchanges in a Anga comparative setting.
In 1994, I observed the acts and deeds of Ankave women during male collective initiations and from this moment on, I tried to propose an alternative analysis of them and thus of New Guinea male rituals in general. I also coordinated a journal issue about life-cycle rituals as an ordered series of relational transformations, both in Australia and Papua New Guinea and I am currently working on applying this kind of analysis to the Baruya ethnographic material gathered through the years by different anthropologists;
I also worked on ethnobotany and ethnozoology, myths, First Contacts as well as on christianisation among both the Ankave and the Baruya.
In another field of research, and based on lengthy interviews with him, I just completed a biography of Chris Owen, the filmmaker (The Red Bowmen, Gogodala, a Cultural Revival?, Bridewealth for a Goddess), who lived and worked in Papua New Guinea for 38 years (1973-2010).

Ritual, Gender, Kinship, Local/Folk Classification, First Contacts, Christianisation, Ethnobotany, Exchanges, Great-men Societies, Life-cycle Exchanges, Names and Naming, Personhood, Ritual Studies, Papuan Languages, Myth, Agency

Anthropology
Gender studies

Société des Océanistes (SdO)
e-toile Pacifique (e-toile)
European Society for Oceanists (ESfO)

Melanesia
Papua New Guinea

20th century
21st century

Tok Pisin, Ankave