Françoise Héritier

François Héritier is Emeritus Professor at the Collège de France, head of the chair of Comparative Studies of African Societies. After studying history geography, and ethnology at La Sorbonne, she went on a one-year mission (in 1957-1958) to Upper-Volta, studying the social aspects of local development programme, wich lead her to later focus on African ethnology. After a certain time devoted to the creation of a documentary language for social sciences in order to computerize information research, she spends almost five years in Africa -starting in 1958- accomplishing nine missions of field work with the samo, pana and mossi people, and more sporadically with bobo and dogon people (Burkina-Faso and Mali).

Her career continues from 1959 to 1966 at the VIth section of the École pratique des hautes études, where she supervises from 1961 to 1966 the Centre d'analyse documentaire pour l'Afrique noire. In 1967, she joins the CNRS (social anthropology laboratory) which she leaves in 1982. In 1980 she is elected study Director at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales and keeps on working there after her election at the Collège de France in 1982 while still teaching at the social anthropology laboratory where she succeeded to Claude Lévi-Strauss. She retired in 1999.

Selected at Pariscience 2010
See the showing : Thursday 07th October 2010 from 18h30 to 20h00