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, I published in 2022 a biography based on lengthy interviews of Chris Owen, the filmmaker. Author of The Red Bowmen, Gogodala, a Cultural Revival?, and Bridewealth for a Goddess, among others, Chris lived in Papua New Guinea for 38 years (1973-2010).

Ritual, Gender, Kinship, Local/Folk Classification, First Contacts, Christianisation, Ethnobotany, 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