Portraits

Could you introduce yourself?

My name is Gulistan Sido, I'm Kurdish from Syria, originally from the Kurdish Mountain "Afrine", a very fertile mountain region and stronghold of olive trees that stretch as far as the eye can see, the land of my ancestors to which I've been very attached since childhood. We consider it our own little paradise. I was born in 1979 and had polio at the age of two. With my reduced mobility, I've had to face many difficulties in my life. But this particular situation didn't stop me from studying. I grew up and went to school in Aleppo, where schooling up to the baccalaureate was conducted in Arabic.

What was your academic career like in Syria, then in France?

I have a literary background. I was able to read and discover Russian literature translated into Arabic, which was abundantly published in Syria at the time. Then, between 1997 and 2001, I studied French literature at the Faculty of Letters and Humanities, in the French Language Department of Aleppo University. In 2002, I graduated with a post-graduate diploma in literature. My first thesis was on the theme of violence in André Malraux's novel La condition humaine.

In 2006, I continued my studies in France, where I did a Master's degree in modern literature at Paris III. I worked on the theme of wisdom and the figures of the wise in the works of André Gide. I was planning to do a Master's degree in Kurdish oral literature at Inalco, but after returning to Syria in 2008, I had difficulties getting back to France and these studies were interrupted.

So, during this period until 2011, I collected and recorded many oral literature texts in my native region and in the Kurdish Cheik Maqsoud district of Aleppo. I also taught French at Aleppo University.

In the wake of the "Arab Spring", the popular uprising in Syria began in March 2011 and, under the blows of violent repression, turned into a civil war that quickly became internationalized. I lived through ten years of this war, which is still raging in my country. A long exodus began for me, from Aleppo to Afrine, then from Afrine to the Al-Jazeera regions and finally landing and exiling in France in October 2021. There, I was able to enroll in a doctorate program at Inalco.

You are a laureate of the PAUSE program and are pursuing your doctoral thesis at Inalco, under the supervision of Ms. Ursula Baumgardt and the co-direction of Amr Ahmed (CeRMI) On what subjects does your research focus?

Today, I'm a member of the Plidam research team (Inalco) and the "Oralités du Monde" (ODM) research group. I'm interested in the articulations and relationships between oral and written modes of literary expression. I study representations of cultural identity and otherness in Kurdish oral and written literature.

Since 2018, Afrine has been occupied by Turkey. In January 2018, Turkey began bombing the city and after 58 days of bombardment, I had to leave with the others on March 18 for the countryside and, alas, I was unable to save my library, which contained hundreds of books in several languages. Fortunately, I was able to save the archive of my oral literature corpus. For me, this archive is a treasure trove. This corpus of oral tales is the foundation on which my thesis is based.

I've always lived on the edge of several languages and cultures. I speak Kurdish, Arabic, Turkish, which I learned in Aleppo, and French. My training in French literature and translation led me to work on a work by Emmanuel Roblès, the play "Montserrat", whose translation into Kurdish I completed in 2022.
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In an interview with Contretemps in June 2021, we discover that you were very involved in the creation of the Kurdish Language and Literature Institute in Afrine in 2013 and the first University of Rojava. Could you tell us a little more about the context and the issues at stake at the time? Today, how do these universities function and what support do they draw on?

Under pressure from the rising Kurdish population, the regime's intelligence services and army withdrew from the Kurdish towns of Afrine, Kobané and Al-Jazeera. A year later, on July 19, 2012, the Rojava revolution got underway. This revolution resulted in the construction of new alternative social institutions and the emergence of a real cultural movement.

In March 2013, the regime bombed the neighborhood in Aleppo where I lived. I had to leave and go to Afrine. The Kurdish regions were then under blockade, completely isolated. It was also very dangerous to travel between these towns and the two big cities, Damascus and Aleppo.

With several academics, in a move to reclaim our language, our culture, which had always been marginalized, banned, stifled, we banded together to found, in October 2013, the first Kurdish language and literature institute "Viyan Amara" designed to train teachers in 2 years. For us, teaching Kurdish was an important event and a historic turning point. As a founding member, I took part in preparing the teaching subjects and planning the training courses in history, grammar and, more specifically, Kurdish literature, adapting the methodology acquired in my French literature course.

Creating universities was a real need to enable students to continue their studies. In 2015, the first university was opened in Afrine. Three other universities will follow: Rojava (2016), Kobané (2017) and Al Charq in Raqqa (2021). Dozens of departments offer training in various disciplines (medicine, civil and ecological engineering, petrochemistry, agriculture, Kurdish language and literature, Jineolojie "women's science"...). These universities are not recognized, given the political status of the democratic self-administration regions of north-eastern Syria. They are financed by the administration. More than 2,000 students have already obtained diplomas and can either work or continue their studies at Master's level.
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In 2020, with several collaborators, you are initiating the "Green Braids" ecological program in Rojava. Could you go back over the genesis of this project, its objectives and achievements?
 

Gulistan Sido and partners. Rojava nursery / Qamishlo

The Green Braids association is a grassroots ecological initiative born in October 2020 against this backdrop of war. Launched by a team of 8 people from different regions of Rojava, it is based in Qamișlo and is active in the Northeast region of Syria. The project began on a voluntary basis, with no budget and just a few seeds collected free of charge. It aims to intensify reforestation efforts by widely mobilizing civil society, and by encouraging, through this citizen mobilization, self-government and municipalities to provide the necessary means to address the region's severe ecological degradation.

After ten years of armed conflict and destructive policies orchestrated by Bashar el-Assad's regime in the territories of Syria, particularly in the region of "Northeastern Syria", alternative solutions had to be found to cope with real social, humanitarian and ecological disasters.

Investments in oil fields, the imposition of intensive cereal monocultures and the ban on tree planting have contributed to the advance of the desert, the drying up of watercourses and air pollution. Not only are populations deprived of drinking water, but they are also faced with an increase in respiratory diseases and cancers.
 

The Tresses Vertes association's vocation is to weave links with life again through the creation of nurseries. It's an act of resistance. Through this volunteer initiative, we aspire to prepare 4 million seedlings of different tree varieties to be replanted throughout the region in 5 years.

The specific objectives of the project are:
- To consolidate the Green Braid project's capacity to reproduce seedlings, in particular at the new Qamishlo nursery. We are backed and supported by the Fondation Danielle Mitterrand and the municipality of Lyon 
. - Reinforce ecological awareness in North-East Syria, and more particularly a culture of tree care.
- Contribute to the technical support and capacity building of the Tresses Vertes project through exchanges with specialists
. - Contribute to preserving/restoring healthy ecosystems and biological diversity.
- Alleviate the psychological pressure caused by the war by involving local residents in the project.

Starting with a nursery of 17,000 trees grown on a small plot of land loaned by the University of Rojava in Qamishlo, the association has spun off new volunteer groups and up to 10 nurseries in the towns of Kobanê, Amuda, Derbasiyê, Tell Tamer, Hassakeh and Raqqa. In order to increase plant cover while respecting natural balances, we have chosen tree species adapted to local ecosystems. Cypress, Beirut and Aleppo pines, lime and pomegranate trees will soon be blooming throughout the Al-Jazeera region. The ambitious goal is to cover 10% of the territory of northern and eastern Syria.

Accompanied by a scientific advisory board, the initiative continues with the creation of five new, larger-capacity nurseries. By promoting the participation of local residents, the Tresses Vertes make popular mobilization the driving force behind their ambition to regenerate healthy and vibrant living environments in northeastern Syria. In schools and high schools, civil society organizations and municipalities, collective work is encouraged through awareness-raising campaigns on ecological issues and training courses. 

Garden of the University of Rojava (Qamishlo)

This program is a winner of the Prix de la fondation Danielle Mitterrand 2022, along with four other local and grassroots initiatives in the Northeast region of Syria. What support does this prize represent for those involved in the project? 

We were awarded this prize as part of the JASMINES network (Jalons et Actions de Solidarité Municipalisme et Internationale avec le Nord-Est de la Syrie) initiated and designed by the Fondation Danielle Mitterrand. This network supports democratic, ecological and alternative projects run by civil society in Rojava and Northeast Syria, and works to build bridges of friendship and cooperation. It is thanks to this program that the city of Lyon has offered us the first financial aid to develop and perpetuate our project.

For us, this award represents recognition of these projects. The distinction we have earned shows the importance and value of the projects we have undertaken. The award aims to make them more visible. It opens new doors of support and solidarity for us, and proves that we are not alone and abandoned. 

What are the interactions between these different programs in the region?

What these alternative programs have in common is the context of war and embargo in which they are developing. Each program represents a different way of acting and resisting. They complement each other and are vital in the sense that each is trying to find solutions and improve the situation. Ecology, the emancipation of women and their role in the democratization of minds, the reorganization of society and the construction of vital infrastructures are essential needs for subsistence and local collective responses.
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Today, how are local populations coping with the exactions committed by Turkey on their territory? What support can they count on to bring these projects to fruition?

Faced with internal threats (the existence of Islamic State sleeper cells) and external threats (attacks and exactions committed by Turkey), the democratic self-administration of northeastern Syria and the populations living under its "Kurdish, Arab, Syriac and Armenian" banner rely first and foremost on their own military force, the Syrian Democratic Forces (FDS), which were able to defeat the EI in 2017. Their attachment to the values carried by their democratic project is based on a new paradigm: the brotherhood of peoples, freedom and male-female equality.

The people are also counting on the support of the major international forces that believe in the same values and defend the rights of peoples to self-determination. They are hoping for a firmer stance from these forces against the Turkish air attacks that have targeted the infrastructure and resources of life. It is by building bridges of friendship and solidarity, and by strengthening cooperative relations with civil society organizations and associations, that the projects can be supported and sustained.
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Pictorial presentation of the first nurseries of the Tresses Vertes / Green Trees project.

What was your initial training, your background before Inalco?

First of all, I studied Classics, specializing in the linguistics of ancient languages. This path, and in particular my preparation for the agrégation in grammar, enabled me to rub shoulders with different languages, which opened my first window on the rich diversity of languages. I went on to write a thesis in Latin linguistics, and since then I've been teaching classics at a lycée. 
Tell us about your career at Inalco? What cultural areas and language(s) are you studying?

After my PhD, I started learning Finnish thanks to the textbook On tie... and by taking classes with a Finnish woman in Lyon. I was very interested in how the language worked, in its "music" and in this cultural area. Finnish's "sister" languages, Estonian in particular, also aroused my curiosity. I got hold of the Manuel d'estonien (A. Chalvin, M. Rüütli & K. Talviste, Inalco) and was touched by the poems proposed in this book and by the music of the language. When I found out that the Estonian language section offered distance learning, I was delighted, because it was a great opportunity to follow university courses, so I enrolled. From the very first year, I learned a lot. Being able to attend the different oral language courses at a distance was very enriching because I could exchange with others and practice the language. The course is stimulating, and I'm continuing my learning (I'm currently in DLC4) of this fascinating language where, for example, consonants and vowels can have three lengths.

How did you "meet" the Vepse language and culture?

While researching Fennic languages, I read that one language, Vepse, had been called "the Sanskrit of Finnish" and this phrase intrigued me. During my studies in classics, Sanskrit was often mentioned, particularly in the context of the comparative grammar of Indo-European languages. So I wanted to learn more about this "Fennic Sanskrit" that was Vepse. I started reading more articles and ordered a Vepse grammar book in Vepse, a Vepse reading book used in elementary school and a Vepse-Russian dictionary. I began to study the language out of curiosity at first, then the peculiarities of the language itself, such as the reflexive forms in conjugation or the absence of consonantal alternation in declension, interested me and made me want to learn it in greater depth. I also listened to Vepse radio on the Internet and watched various programs on Karelian television. Over time, I came to understand it better, so I listened and read more. One day, I found the vepse newspaper Kodima on the internet with the editor's e-mail address on the back page. I dreamed of meeting someone with whom I could exchange in this language. So I (timidly) tried to write in vepse to the newspaper's e-mail address to ask for advice on learning the language. Galina Baburova, a journalist, got back to me very quickly and we started corresponding.

Later, I went to Petrozavodsk to meet her, and it was very moving to finally be able to speak in Vepse. The people were charming and, in Galina Baburova's group of friends, Vepse, Russian and Finnish were spoken side by side. Karelia is fascinating for its mix of cultures and influences. Nature is also very beautiful, and the architecture and woodwork at the vepse museum in Šoutjärv or on the island of Kiži are cultural treasures.

You're a translator. How did this vocation come about?

Translation, as an "act", forces us to confront another language as closely as possible, to become aware of this otherness, to observe it "with a magnifying glass" and to look at the details that make up the richness of a language. But translating also means creating in one's own language, finding, if possible, "the same". It's this movement of immersion in a different language and creation in one's own language that I find interesting.

You've just translated Le chant de l'ours, a vepse epic by Nina Zaïtséva to be published in November 2021 by éditions Boréalia. What determined your desire to translate this text into French? 

When I picked up the text, I was intrigued by the fact that an epic could still be written in 2012. I had in mind the landmarks of Homer's epics and the Kalevala. First of all, I did an initial translation to read and understand the text. I was astonished because it didn't correspond to my representations or my "epic landmarks", it was "something else". It was also a privileged access to the heart of Vepse culture. I found the text beautiful: the language is musical, the voiks* (lament songs) have great expressive power, and the text presents a remarkable poetic diversity thanks to different types of verse. It's a singular work that also touches with its beautiful simplicity. It was the desire to share this text, which provides an insight into the largely unknown Vepse culture, that prompted me to translate the text into French. Antoine Chalvin then directed me to Émilie Maj and the éditions Borealia.
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*Reading of extracts from the vepse epic (from 4.20mn) by Nina Zaiceva

Tell us about your experience in translating this text (and more generally...)

It was difficult at times, but I was lucky enough to work with Pierre Présumey, who has a great deal of experience in the practice of poetic writing. It was he who came up with the idea of using hepta-, octo- and decasyllabic, based on my first translations, thus restoring to the French text the metrical diversity of the original Vepse. We went back over the text several times, verse by verse, to check prosody and metrics, then I would return to the Vepse text with the French text opposite to note the language points to be corrected, then we would return to the French text, verse by verse. It was stimulating linguistic and poetic work for both of us.

Nina Zaiceva was also a great help. When I had questions, I could write to her and she would explain certain expressions, dialect forms or metaphors. The Estonian literary translation course was also a great help, because it helped me understand what literary translation is.

Which expression of Vepse culture was particularly difficult to translate?

Nina Zaiceva likes to evoke an imaginative vepse expression: vauged uni, literally "white sleep", which she used in the title of one of her collections of poems: Vauktan unen süles, lit. "In the arms, in the embrace of white sleep". Valentina Lebedeva, another vepse author, has also dedicated a text to vauged uni. This expression is not difficult to translate literally, although the word uni can also mean "dream". What is tricky, if not impossible to render in French, is the experience to which this expression refers. Vauged uni could be translated as "sleepless night", since it refers to not sleeping through the night, but in vepse, as Nina Zaiceva explains, it's a time when, admittedly, you don't sleep, but during which, you can think about what you've done or what you're going to do, "converse with God and entrust your thoughts to him"... it's neither a bad time nor associated with anything negative, as the word "insomnia", another possible translation, might suggest. Valentina Lebedeva explains, in connection with vauged uni, that she doesn't sleep, and that the stars then say to her: Tule tänna! Libu meidennoks "Come here, come up to us"; she looks specifically at one of them twinkling and becomes aware of the passage of time to peacefully welcome the day. "Nuit blanche" (sleepless night), which refers more to the absence of sleep throughout the night, or "insomnia" (insomnia), which is perceived more as a negative experience, wouldn't really fit. The expression vepse and all the poetry it contains therefore remains difficult to translate.

Do you have any new translation projects or desires? 


It's a great experience that makes me want to continue translating. I've spoken to Emilie Maj (éditions Borealia) about other Vepses texts, as well as Saami texts that I've translated and passed on to her. Above all, I'm still learning.

What is your academic background (Inalco and non-Inalco)?

I began by doing two years of law, and very quickly it became clear to me that this discipline was too hermetic for me. My career path turned out to be more eclectic. I enrolled at Inalco in Russian in 1992, then in Persian, which I abandoned two years after starting because of the overlaps - you have to remember that at the time we were running between the Clichy (Russian) and Asnières (Persian) teaching centers. I obtained a bachelor's degree in Culture islamique et civilisation musulmane (CICM) from Inalco, then went on to validate a master's degree on family themes in Uzbekistan and a DEA on the epidemiological situation in the same country, under the supervision of Catherine Poujol, professor of Central Asian history. It was the dark and savage 1990s. I went to Russia in my first year of Russian, I was in the class of Mr. Michel Chicouène, an incredible, unforgettable and extremely demanding teacher.

Thanks to a MAE scholarship, I spent 6 months in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, for my Master's thesis (Master 1), where I was hosted by the IFEAC (Institut français d'Études sur l'Asie centrale), directed at the time by the Hellenist Pierre Chuvin. After defending my master's degree, I went back to Tashkent to work in the cultural department of the French embassy. I ran the Alliance française in Tashkent for a while, and the one in Samarkand for a few months, while continuing my research for my DEA. 
At the same time, I took care of an orphanage, helping to supply medicines. We had set up a whole chain with pharmacists in Picardie, the region where I live, and airline pilots...I translated the instructions, helped out as I could, we worked out little DIY projects, the only things possible at the time, we developed strategies...


I learned a lot from the field, and if it hadn't been for Inalco and Catherine Poujol, my teacher on Central Asia, I wouldn't be where I am today... There are no coincidences in life, and now we're colleagues at Inalco in the Eurasia department, which is a great career path for me! 
Before starting my doctoral thesis, I took a diploma in epidemiology and statistics applied to biology (Inserm and École de médecine). I needed this training to be able to imagine case-control surveys in the field and to master the protocol, ethical and statistical issues.

My doctoral thesis at EHESS, under the supervision of Alain Blum, focused on power relations and health in Uzbekistan. It is now published by Éditions Petra. I have taken part in numerous ANR (CNRS) and PHARE (Ined) projects, and consulted for the World Bank, Sofreco and the French Ministry of Labor. I have also worked in Morocco in rural areas with poor populations and in health centers, where I studied issues of access to healthcare and infant mortality indicators.


Also in the 1990s, I worked extensively in Uzbekistan at a time when the first AIDS projects were being set up in the countries of the former USSR with the TACIS programs, and on drug addiction too. Obviously, in these highly authoritarian and/or illiberal regimes, these issues had no place, and neither did the infected. With Médecins du Monde, I also worked on high-risk groups, notably heroin addicts in Tajikistan's Upper Badakhshan region on the border with Afghanistan.

For me, the field is essential, it's at the heart of my research and thinking, of my methodology, theoretical fundamentals are too, but they don't systematically precede fieldwork.

As a sociologist, what are your lines of research? What cultural area(s) are you working on and/or have you worked on?

My research and activities have long focused on health issues, the relationship to illness, different therapeutic practices, whether traditional or not, the actors, the strategies of these actors and their way of resisting authoritarian power, particularly in Central Asia and Russia. I have also worked extensively on social and demographic issues, and social protection systems with my colleague Cécile Lefèvre, Professor of Sociology at the University of Paris. We worked together on these subjects in the three countries of the South Caucasus (Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia) and on questions of poverty measurement too, which are fascinating issues from a sociological point of view. From 2007-2009, I branched out and became interested in labor migration, having witnessed first-hand the major phenomena of economic migration between the countries of Central Asia and Russia. These processes began in the early 2000s, and sometimes even earlier, depending on the country and the conflict. For almost 15 years now, I've been fascinated by these issues, migrants' strategies, networks, organization and decision-making, changes in power relations within patriarchal societies, the division of labor, gender relations, demographic transformations, the role of money (migrants' remittances to their families in their countries of origin), which calls for a rereading of Marcel Mauss's Essai sur le don.
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From 2014-2015, I was asked to work on an American project, PIRE - Promoting Urban Sustainability in the Arctic (which also involves the Russians, and Norwegians among others), funded by the National Science Foundation. It's a huge project dealing with Arctic issues in many disciplines, notably in the hard sciences, but with a humanities and social sciences component in which my research on the labor migrations of populations originating from Central Asia and the Caucasus and on issues of urban identity in the major cities of the Russian Arctic fits in. With my colleague Marlene Laruelle, formerly of Inalco and now a professor at George Washington University (Washington DC), we have criss-crossed numerous Arctic regions and cities from Murmansk to Yakutia via Norilsk. This project is continuing, and we're planning to visit a small town in Kolyma on the Laptev Sea in two years' time. Of course, the covid epidemic has cut researchers off from their fieldwork, and I don't think Russia has yet reopened its doors to researchers, but it also allows us to step back from our research, to take the time to read, to revisit certain theoretical contributions that have been set aside or to consolidate others, to nourish our research in a different way.

I'm also interested in religion and Islam, particularly among the migrants I study from Central Asia and the Caucasus, and in Islam as a resource that is not only religious but also political and social, whether in Russia or Central Asia. The history of the relationship between power and religion in the imperial era, then in the Soviet era and since the end of the USSR is absolutely fascinating and highly complex. During my time in the Arctic, I became fascinated by "polar" Islam and its sociological and multiform translations.

In my research on immigration to the former USSR, I also draw heavily on the work of sociologists such as Sayad, Bourdieu and Noiriel, to name but a few, who have worked on Algerian immigration. I often stress the importance of putting situations in different cultural areas into perspective, and not necessarily comparing one situation with another, but rather illuminating one situation with another.
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Finally, to conclude this section on immigration, a central theme of my research, I wanted to mention that with my colleague Laetitia Bucaille, we thematized our Master 1 HSS seminar around a research object that is the Renault factory in Boulogne-Billancourt closed in 1992 and razed in 2004. This subject synthesizes a number of research themes, such as immigration, of course, but also militancy, trade unionism, family strategies, daily life, housing, and so on. Students will therefore have to define their methodology and work either in archives, or conduct interviews with alumni, skilled workers, bosses, social actors, etc. In this way, we draw on a diversity of memory resources and combine methodological theory with different forms of fieldwork! We are fortunate at Inalco to be able to carry out this type of project, and there is real interest on the part of the students.

The "ArmenYouth Rest&Rev" project you're carrying out with a colleague from the University of Paris is a winner of the Emergence Idex prize. Has the recent Covid-19 pandemic impacted (or is it still impacting) this project? What solutions did you have to adopt?

Yes, of course our pitches were impacted by the pandemic, nevertheless when we wrote the project with my colleague Cécile Lefèvre in May 2020, we were already in the crisis and we were fully aware of what might happen in terms of border closures and restrictions. So during the writing process, we decided to add a French location in Marseille, the historic birthplace of the diaspora after the genocide of 1915. In fact, we carried out our first fieldwork in Marseille at the time of last spring's confinement (2021). This enabled us to start filming interviews (this project has a visual dimension) and to follow the genocide commemorations on April 24. Several other fieldwork sites have been set up in Marseille, as well as interviews with students of Armenian origin at Inalco.

When we wrote our project, we never imagined for a moment that a third Karabagh war would take place. It's been a year since this conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia broke out, and we've added this painful and tragic dimension to the lives of young people (since our project focuses on plural Armenian youth), those who have been hit hardest by the war in Armenia and those in the diaspora who have left to fight and/or help. We therefore adapt to contingencies, be they health or geopolitical.

I plan to travel to Armenia in the autumn as part of this project to conduct interviews, but this remains hypothetical.

You are co-organizer of the Transcaucases festival, which will run from October to December at Inalco. How did you get involved in this project?

This is a wonderful and highly original project. I took part in the previous Transcaucases festival several years ago, and I find the idea of combining cinema, music, research, book presentations and debates absolutely fascinating and innovative. As I'm passionate about the Caucasus and sensitive to the themes brought out by this extremely rich program, I was delighted when Taline Ter Minassian (Inalco) suggested I co-organize it with her and Anouche Der-Sarkissian, our colleague from Nanterre. I'll be presenting several films and a debate around books on French writers who traveled during the terrible 1930s in the USSR (Caucasus and Ukraine). This festival is important because it allows many people to talk about this region, which is often misunderstood.

You are in charge of the DU Passerelle at Inalco. Following the Urgence Afghanistan mobilization campaign launched by the Institute and the Inalco Foundation, you will be integrating Afghan students into the DU. What is your role? How will this welcome be organized? What are the challenges and hopes? Tell us about your commitment...

I took on responsibility for the DU Passerelle in September 2020 so just a year ago. My meeting with Marie-Caroline Saglio-Yatzimirsky, head of the DU H2M (Inalco), who was head of it before me, was fabulous. Thanks to her, I was able to commit to this responsibility very quickly. Although we don't have many students (20 in all over two years), there's a real responsibility and empathy towards the students selected. At inalco, we give all students a chance, whatever their status. This year, in June, we selected 4 Afghans (3 men and one woman) who arrived before the events of this summer. All of them are affected by the situation, having lost at least one parent to the Taliban. The Syrians are also well represented in DU, so we mustn't forget them.

The seizure of power by the Taliban on August 15 and the events that followed until the attack and the departure of the Americans left us very little time to act in a hurry. With several colleagues and the Inalco Presidency, we did our utmost in liaison with various institutions, the MEAE, the MESRI, etc., to evacuate who we could. The bombing threw a spanner in the works, and now you know the situation. The airport has just reopened for commercial flights, but ticket prices are unaffordable, especially for students. 
We have admitted three students (two men and one woman) to the DU Passerelle distance learning program. These students are still stranded in Afghanistan, waiting for a call like the Angel's message...I'm still hopeful that they can be evacuated. A lot is happening right now: the AUF (Agence universitaire de le francophonie), the MEnS (Migrants in Higher Education) are very active and very invested with the French authorities. I'm in daily mail contact with one of the students who tells his story and tries as best he can to continue to hope despite the omnipresent violence in society. The Fondation Inalco supports us financially and is mobilizing a lot through this campaign for Afghanistan whether to help the DU Passerelle but also researchers at risk (programme national PAUSE). We are working with the Foundation to develop other possibilities, as adaptability is absolutely essential in the current context.

In addition, we work a lot with the MEnS network and the AUF, which, thanks to its AIMES program (Accueil et intégration des migrants dans l'Enseignement supérieur), funds us in part and supports us a lot. The MEnS network has 42 DU Passerelle students, so from mid-August onwards we've been giving a lot of thought and taking action through this network to distribute the Afghan student files that came to us via the CPU (Conférence des présidents d'universités). The most complicated issues to resolve will undoubtedly relate to housing, as is the case for many students, but we are organizing ourselves through various personal and associative networks. It's important to remember that if we manage to save the students, we don't save their families most of the time, and that's not without consequences for everyone's mental health. We've been encountering these problems for much longer with other populations, especially from Africa and the Middle East. We have a psychology unit as part of the DU Passerelle and DU H2M, which also enables us to work together on these issues. At Inalco, we have a wealth of human and teaching resources, as well as a wealth of ideas. There's a real human disposition and spirit to mobilize to help these students find a place in society, to exist. This year, we've set up a writing workshop for DU Passerelle students, and we'd like to give them the chance to speak out, to write, to "do" with words and ills. We'll see if this results in a writing project.

The question of exile and the relationship with oneself is a subject that has also animated me for a long time, particularly when I worked with Chechen communities. I was also a trainer for France Terre d'asile and Forum réfugiés for many years. Issues of vulnerability have always been at the heart of my work and research, whether in the fields of health, social issues or migration... The challenges are immense, and so are the hopes!

Thomas Szende. Portrait

Thomas Szende, you are director of the EA 4514 Plidam Research Unit, head of Inalco's Hungarian Studies section, a member of Inalco's Scientific Council and also a member of Uspc's Board of Directors.
What is your background?

I was born in Hungary. From this childhood I inherited an insatiable curiosity for languages and cultures, and a strange fascination for borders (back home they were closed). I wanted to be somewhere else and see something else. I owe a great deal to my teachers, who often told me: "Omnia disce. Postea videbis nihil esse superfluum" (Learn everything, then you'll see that nothing is superfluous). 
And since I have the opportunity to revisit my past thanks to your questions, I realize that most of my current scientific questioning stems from my school and university years. Our youth, through our first readings and discoveries, seems to establish a line of conduct that continues to irrigate our work and priorities throughout our professional and personal paths.

I trained as a teacher as part of a triple Hungarian-French-Russian curriculum at ELTE University in Budapest. After teaching at Université Paris 3 and Ecole Normale Supérieure (rue d'Ulm), I was appointed lecturer in Hungarian at Inalco in 1994. In 1997, I was awarded the habilitation to direct research. Since 2008, I have been a university professor.


What do you teach?

As part of the Europe Department, I'm in charge of the Hungarian Studies section. I teach Hungarian language and civilization, as well as translation. I am also a lecturer in the "Language Didactics" and "Intercultural Communication and Training" courses.


What's your personal view of our school?

By an incredible stroke of luck, I was recruited to Inalco. I've been teaching here for quite a long time - between joys and disappointments - and I'm extremely proud of it. Our establishment is a global academic reference with its pool of outstanding experts. I particularly like Inalco when it fulfils its noble missions of transmission and dissemination, when it respects our skills and knows how to unite us, when it is united in opening its doors to us all.

Otherwise, I'm convinced of the continuum between our two hats: teaching and research. In my case, it's the same incredulity that arouses these two dimensions of my profession. "I teach Hungarian. - What do you teach? Law?" "- I do research in an applied linguistics lab. - Applied to what? In a white coat? With test tubes?" 


You are Director of the EA 4514 PLIDAM Joint Research Unit
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It's a unique observatory: Plidam brings together researchers, PhDs and post-docs from diverse geographical origins and academic backgrounds, with first-hand data on a whole range of European, African and Asian languages, literatures and civilizations. Theoretical reflections and field surveys on language learning, teaching and use are combined.


More concretely?

I'd like to mention just a few of the areas in which we work. Production of linguistic models for teaching purposes; questioning the geopolitical and political backgrounds on which education systems rely to disseminate foreign languages; the role of mother tongues, foreign languages and second languages in the construction of social bonds; language acquisition processes, ways of constructing and assessing skills ; teacher/learner relations, new technologies in the transmission of knowledge; the challenges of literary and specialized translation, the status of lexicon, culture, the arts and literature in language learning; the development of innovative, dematerialized teaching tools.


What does it mean to you to be the head of a laboratory?

You have to provide impetus, act as referee and monitor projects. With the help, of course, of my two deputies, the heads of our six axes and our administrative manager. I think that every team manager dreams of creating a motivating environment, where a convivial yet studious atmosphere reigns: federating exceptional researchers who need to work like free electrons, generating resounding scientific debates, sparking applauded meetings and publications that are read and widely cited. And above all: to have a taste for human contact. To put it another way: to cultivate our talents, which are often internationally recognized. All my colleagues deserve special attention, and it's up to us to guide their career plans, which are built throughout their lives.


What are you satisfied with?

I have great people around me. I wish I could name them all, but we're a growing team. Without my colleagues, Plidam wouldn't exist. In the case of our team, the research process is also rooted in the diversity of our researchers' backgrounds, and the variety of their codes and rituals. Our own trajectories provide new avenues for reflection.

And there's more. With determination and enthusiasm, we have built up an international scientific network, from Brazil to Japan, via Tanzania and Morocco. And I hear from all sides that we've become a "leading" laboratory in our field. For me, this is the ultimate reward.

I have to confess: leading research is a jubilant activity, between the joy of spotting a Master's student, who abandons the lucrative prospects of the "pro", and begins to think about embarking on a thesis, facing the obstacle course that awaits him... and the joy of reuniting with emeritus professors to continue to mobilize their erudition.
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Your difficulties?

By mentoring our young researchers and teaching them to build their careers with passion, humility and determination, we are building the university of tomorrow. This is an immense responsibility. However, training doctoral students is not always straightforward.

Firstly, the resources made available to young people are largely insufficient, despite the best efforts of the Doctoral School. Secondly, I don't know if there's a recipe for training doctoral students. I don't know how to get them to want to do it. 
You have to make them understand that any real research project is also a life project, and that you have to make progress, whatever the cost, despite the doubts that are inevitable. Doubts about your subject, doubts about your writing skills in the face of pressure to publish, doubts about the value of speaking at conferences where the degree to which the audience listens to you is sometimes symbolic except during coffee breaks, doubts too about your research supervisor: will he or she be able to give you a leg up? when the time comes, over and above his or her moral support, will he or she be willing to put his or her network to work to place you?





























Let's add an optimistic note. Doing a thesis requires a lot of sacrifice, but the team's role is to show the doctoral student that he or she is not alone.


Is there competition between researchers, teams and institutions?

Competition to survive is fierce, and at a time when luck smiles on linear lives, we support researchers with zig-zagging career paths. Most of our PhD students come from far away and don't always know where they're going. There's constant frustration at not being able to express their full potential because of stupidly material constraints. How can you give the best of yourself in a climate of latent unease about the future? And once you've completed your thesis, which is a prerequisite for any career in research or higher education, how do you translate all this investment into employment? 

Plidam is known for its major international events.

A dozen collective works are currently being published, including several in cooperation with partners around the world following on from bilateral colloquia: University of Macerata (Italy), Herzen University of St. Petersburg (Russia), University of Mumbai (India), University of Pécs (Hungary).

Perhaps a word about our recent major international seminar entitled "Distances apprivoisées - l'enseignement confiné des langues étrangères", held at Inalco last June. The theme was delivered to us directly by a grim health news story. Setting up virtual classrooms and appropriating new tools is a particularly delicate challenge for teachers, students and educational establishments alike. In order to draw the first lessons from this unprecedented experience, we invited more than 40 researchers from all over the world, specialists in various languages/cultures and practicing their profession in a wide variety of contexts, to testify online. Thanks to the Institute's technical services, all the sometimes poignant contributions are already online, and the proceedings will soon be published by Editions des archives contemporaines, thanks to my colleagues Diana Lemay and Louise Ouvrard.
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What is the focus of your own work?

My areas of research cover lexicology, lexicography, language and cultural didactics and Hungarian linguistics.


You have just published a new monograph in English.

 

Szende, T. (2020), Form, Use, Consciousness: Key Topics In L2 Grammar Instruction, Brussels: Peter Lang (256 pages).


Thanks to the "support for international mobility" scheme, I was able to spend a semester in Oxford: libraries, coffee shops and pubs within easy reach. What better environment to finish writing a book you've been working on for two years? This is the moment to thank the CNRS, the C.S. (Inalo's scientific council), my section and my department for letting me go.


Your book is about grammar. Is this fashionable?

Grammar is hard to get around. Admittedly, teaching methods vary from one language to another. A language with no attested written code and no institutionalized grammar is not taught in the same way as a language that is heavily and historically codified.

At Inalco, despite differences in pedagogical implementation, each language and civilization section offers courses at all learning levels that focus explicitly on grammar. This means that, as part of our approach to language appropriation, a specific and typically 'frontal' place is reserved for linguistic structures. Similarly, grammar is the (thinly veiled) subject of translation classes (theme / version) designed to help students understand and memorize the structures of the language, and also of many classes called 'explication de textes' (often literary).
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Doesn't working on grammatical constructions slow down learning?

Some people think that grammar stands in the way of proper linguistic appropriation. Nothing could be further from the truth. It's by communicating that we build language competence, we're used to saying. But to communicate in a foreign language, you need to have structured tools at your disposal, and the ability to identify the specificity of the constructions being used in relation to others. Learners embark on the adventure of appropriating a new language with the baggage of their first language and the various matrices firmly rooted in their mother tongue. To express his thoughts, he has to perform multiple operations: connection, determination, quantification and so on. If the learner's ambition is to produce and understand statements in a foreign language, he or she constantly feels the need to select, assemble and organize new linguistic material. And he quickly realizes his grammatical limitations.


Are you old-fashioned? Communicating in language without mastering grammar would then be pointless?

Undeniably, the grammatical object must be skilfully articulated to the imperatives of interpersonal communication. However, there's no such thing as 'communicative everything'. Knowing a language means knowing how to communicate properly. Grammar is the key to structuring your messages and getting your intentions across in the best possible way.

Even the most modern and contextualized language teaching methods struggle to do without a more systematic treatment of forms. To motivate the learner as much as possible, the teacher can create the illusion of 'disrupting' the traditional language-learning itinerary by starting with sequences that can be used as they are in everyday exchanges, so as to stimulate the learners' active participation.

However, there is no such thing as purely communicative learning configured 'in a functional globality'. At some point, if we want the learner to understand the usefulness of producing forms in the correct way, we'll have to draw his attention to the components and to the ways in which these components are assembled within the target language.


But grammar is often scary...

The mark left by grammar teaching is sometimes catastrophic. Is this linked to the inhibiting connotation of the concept of grammar itself? In the imagination of many of our learners, working on linguistic constructions in a foreign language awakens anxieties fuelled by school reminiscences and in particular the sterile formalism of mother-tongue cueing and labeling.

Fear of grammatical errors leads to interactional paralysis, and grammar means time and time again: repetitive exercise sessions, multiple, cryptic terminology, declension and conjugation tables to be learned by heart, the point of which is hard to see.






















Fear of grammatical errors leads to interactional paralysis. 
The question of how grammatical knowledge is represented can hardly be avoided. All too often, foreign language learning is associated with the memorization of rules and their correct application, while forgetting the communicative significance of language facts.


What would you advise your colleagues to do: more grammar, less grammar?

Let's remember a first thing. Moving from one linguistic system to another requires us to take into account the grammatical knowledge that the learner has already acquired by incorporating new data into existing patterns. Linguistic expression is intimately linked to the organization and conceptualization of the environment in our cultures. A quick example: localization is not just a matter of translating words or expressions from one's mother tongue (or from other languages in one's language repertoire), but also of understanding a different way of thinking, which requires the implementation of reflexive pedagogical activities.
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Clearly, our learners dream of expressing themselves 'unfiltered' and seek to be part of the target community. So, as long as grammar appears in the classroom as something purely speculative, an 'inappropriate' discourse on language that doesn't confess to its practical functions, learners risk adopting an ambivalent attitude.

The question remains. Is it appropriate to question grammar in the age of communicative and social tasks? I try to explain this throughout my book: far from being an abstract system of forms, language exists only in the actual language practices that take place between real speakers, in a concrete physical and social environment. The binary opposition between 'doing grammar' and 'acting' is ultimately of little use.

Organized around the facts of language to be transmitted, language pedagogy is much more than identifying the linguistic content to be taught in class. For example, understanding the grammar of Hungarian is a matter for linguists; understanding the grammar of Hungarian as apprehended in an institutional context by a native French-speaking student at Inalco in the early 21st century is not a purely linguistic affair. Benefiting from interdisciplinarity, and a whole series of thematic openings, language appropriation tends to include contributions from sectors such as: contrastive linguistics, sociolinguistics, ethnolinguistics, language policy, psycholinguistics, anthropology, semiotics, literature, etc.
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Finally, what are you currently working on?

I'm thinking about how certain stereotypical sequences can be described and catalogued. I'm deliberately keeping things vague, because I can't see the end yet. Besides, I prefer to surprise my readers. Incidentally, it was in isolation, confined to my home for months to combat the spread of the Covid-19 virus, that I got the idea to start writing a new book, which seems to have come at just the right moment, illustrating that language, a powerful social tool and the fundamental foundation of any community, is what connects us to the Other.

 

Abdul-Azam AZIZI is originally from Afghanistan, Kabul to be precise. He arrived in France 3 years ago. He is a graduate interpreter-mediator of the 1st class of the DIU Hospitalité, Médiations, Migrations (Inalco-Université de Paris) and is continuing his studies at Inalco in International Relations and Persian. He is currently a beneficiary of subsidiary protection. 

What is your initial training? your studies and/or profession in Afghanistan. 

In Kabul, I was a student in my 3rd year of Law and Political Science when I had to leave. I wanted to become a university professor. And to pay for my studies, I was teaching history and Persian (language and literature) at secondary school level. 

When did you arrive in France? 

I arrived in France in January 2017 in Paris, Gare du Nord. 

What difficulties did you encounter? 

As soon as I arrived in France, I encountered quite a few difficulties. At first, I was "dubliné"¹. My fingerprints had been taken in Norway and I'd been refused refugee status there, so I was afraid of being sent back from France like I'd been from Norway. And if France sent me back to Norway, the country I'd fled, I risked being deported to Afghanistan. I didn't know where to go, and only spoke a few words thanks to my high school French classes. I spent a week on the streets before managing to get into the La Chapelle refugee camp. I had hopes, because normally in the camp, they give help to new arrivals. But after 3 days, they transferred me to Tarbes. 

Once there, about a month later, they took my fingerprints and the problems began. According to the procedure, to declare my presence on the territory, I had to report to the police station every week. Which I did, until one day they closed the doors on me and told me I couldn't go back this time. They transferred me to the Toulouse detention center, the last step before sending me back to Norway. I stayed in the center for ten days and went to court twice, but my case was rejected both times, so I was about to be deported. I had a stroke of luck because at the last moment an article appeared that was more lenient towards refugees who respected the procedure. 

This article authorized refugees to leave on their own and not be forced to do so. At the last minute, I was allowed to go to court a third time and the judge released me from the detention center. I returned to Tarbes and fled to Paris, for fear of returning to the detention center and being deported for good. I then lived in hiding for 18 months. Thanks to some friends, I was no longer sleeping in the street, but I wasn't allowed to go to university, work or get any help. In order to resume my studies in one way or another, I started French lessons in various associations in Paris and the Ile de France region. Thanks to these courses, I finally managed to acquire a beginner's level in French at the end of 2018. 

How did you hear about Inalco? 

Thanks to volunteers from the association 'la 1011' who gave French classes at the MIE Paris 3eme, I heard about Inalco. I kept asking for help to get into university and resume my studies, so a volunteer advised me to find out about Inalc'ER. I was determined to go back to university. She told me about a program for refugees and said I should try to apply. She told me that it was a Language University and that with my master's degree in Persian, I could even study there as an extension. I submitted my application, took a short French language proficiency test with the director of Inalc'ER and received a positive reply a week later. I was so happy, it was the first system where I was officially accepted to follow official courses in an academic space, my dream for a long time. This all happened in December 2018. 

How did your integration into Inalco go? 

At the beginning of 2019, I joined the Inalc'ER program. It was about ten hours a week, I don't remember very well because a lot happened afterwards. Little by little I met fellow students from all over the world, and I benefited from the tutors, master's students for example, who were very kind. They showed us how to overcome the difficulties we had in the classroom. I benefited from teachers who were so committed. They were always with us, teaching us French but not only that, showing us the way and the different possibilities we could have if we wanted to work or study. It was very concrete and stimulating. For example, we had appointments at business schools to find out about the business world, at the BNF for exhibitions... They showed us all our possibilities as students. 

Tell us about your career at Inalco

Inalc'ER is a two-year course. For my part, I took all my language and integration courses until summer 2019 and then tried to get into the 2nd year of International Relations and Persian Language. I successfully completed this course last year and was also lucky enough to be part of the first class of the DIU H2M that my Inalc'ER teacher had told me about. 

Why did you choose this course?

I had several reasons. I wanted to work with exiles and have legitimacy. Here, without a diploma it's a bit complicated, it also allows you to showcase your skills. What's more, I'd just been through the migrant experience. I felt I could help a lot. I understood the difficulties that people can go through in these situations. I'd already worked as an interpreter at the Pôle Emploi, the Mission Locale, the CAF, the Préfecture, the bank... but I thought it would be good to take my work further. Mediation was an important and interesting idea for me, not just translating but establishing a link with people and between people. Personally, I don't like conflict and I'm always looking for solutions, so I thought I could succeed in this profession. 

How many languages do you speak?

I'm fluent in 4 languages. My mother tongue is Persian. I also understand Pashto, Afghanistan's second official language. I read and write Arabic. I'm fluent in French. I also speak a little English and Norwegian, thanks to my travels and studies. 
During the health crisis, your DIU class mobilized in favor of vulnerable people. Tell us about your experience. 

To start with, I have to say that I myself wasn't in great shape during the lockdown. I was bored and gradually losing my enthusiasm. I continued with my classes, but I wasn't feeling very well. Suddenly, the teachers offered to give practical support to people who were finding it difficult to understand or were feeling lonely as a result of the crisis. This job has helped me a lot, it makes a difference to be useful for people who need help more than I do. I translated, interpreted and formatted invaluable documents, such as information texts for the Red Cross in the context of the health crisis, information from the prefecture on asylum application procedures or health facilities, and Watizat guides. I also worked with Le Cèdre to check in regularly with people far from home and without family or loved ones. 

How can we improve the welcome arrangements for exiled students set up at Inalco? 

On the Inalco website, I think it would be interesting to give a little more information for exiled students. They don't always know what they can and can't do to continue their studies, for example. Also, during the courses, it was pointed out that it would be interesting to have a mediation office for exiled students to prevent misunderstandings between students and teachers, for example, and also to accompany them in the French school system. 

Do you have any other activities outside Inalco?

I work at BULAC, the University library. I'm involved in several associations, particularly cultural ones. 

What are your projects and goals? 

I'd like to continue my studies up to doctorate level and become a university professor. I hope to work in a field of cultural mediation between France and Afghanistan. 

What advice or message would you like to pass on to new DU passerelle or DIU H2M students? 

Just one message: Make the most of this rich year with important encounters, a path opening up for you towards the future. You'll find a great network and experiences to share with teachers, classmates and speakers. 


¹ "dubliné" refers to asylum seekers who are subject to a procedure under the 2013 so-called Dublin III regulation, which stipulates that an asylum application can only be examined by one European country, usually the first country of entry into Europe where fingerprints were collected.

Hélène de Penanros, HDR lecturer in Lithuanian.

- What was your initial training, your background before Inalco?

Nothing. You could say that I'm a true "Inalco product", arriving from my native Brittany, a year after the Bac, to join the ranks of the Russisants in Clichy. I wanted to "do Langues O".


- How did you go about discovering and then choosing your language of study? Were you tempted by one or more other languages?

I was tempted by all languages a priori. I just had to choose. Why Russian? Perhaps the international context and the fall of the Berlin Wall played a role, as they did for many people at the time.



I was tempted by all the languages I could think of. 

- Your arrival at Inalco as a student?

My arrival at Inalco was marked by a stroke of luck: choosing at random, on enrolment, between three teaching groups, that of Professor Michel Chicouène (biography on the journal of Slavic studies) . This charismatic professor was remarkable for his method of teaching Russian based on a subtle cocktail mixing theory, oral and written practice and the use of new technologies, which involved seamless coordination of all the teachers in his group. Nothing was left to chance, and we benefited from a regulated, harmonized progression in all subjects.

Fascinated by the rigor and clarity of his teaching, it was only natural that I should follow him into the Lithuanian course, for which he was also responsible. I would later learn that, in addition to being a pedagogue, Michel Chicouène (bibliography on Babelio) was also a great linguist, author of original theories, largely at odds with established models, notably on the writing of Russian and Lithuanian.

These theories, which have the advantage of considerably simplifying the presentation of the phonological and morphological systems of these languages and bringing regularity where inconsistencies are usually legion, are still totally relevant today - and I of course apply them today in my teaching of Lithuanian grammar, as well as his mode of organization for the coordination of my section, by the way.

Meeting Mr Chicouène was decisive for me. I was already passionate about languages, but teaching in secondary school, almost exclusively based on "practice", left so many questions unanswered: Why can the "present progressive" (be+ING) in English refer to the future? (cf. "He's leaving tomorrow.") Why in the expression "was für ein..." (...Mensch bist du ?) in German, für does not govern the accusative contrary to the general use of this preposition? With every fact of language - a question, with no answer other than "It's like that". And there, with these Russian and Lithuanian courses, I was discovering a method that makes it possible to analyze forms, to bring out their regularities, and thus to highlight explanatory principles: I was discovering linguistics.

I quickly made it my specialty, embarking on a parallel course of study in language sciences at Paris 7 - Denis Diderot from the bachelor's level upwards. But I can't forget that it was to this professor at Inalco that I first discovered this discipline, which is now my day-to-day occupation - a linguist never ceases to wonder about the way in which what is said around him is said (which can make him a bit of a pain)!















- When and how did your teaching/research career begin? what year? where?

My research began with a thesis in linguistics on a Russian morpheme that can have the status of a prefix or preposition, which raised the more general question of what a grammatical category is.

After my thesis, I went to Lithuania to perfect my Lithuanian, and very soon Inalco opened a position in Lithuanian, as Mr. Chicouène had retired. After my recruitment (2002), it was of course this language that focused all my attention, whether on developing the curriculum (with the transition to the LMD) and the search for additional resources, structuring a course of my own or developing original research.



- What does your research focus on? Your attachment to the UMR 8202 SEDYL research center (CNRS).

Lithuanian is a rarely taught language. Inalco is the only establishment in France where this language is taught, and one of the very few places worldwide to offer such a complete curriculum (from bachelor to doctorate). From a research point of view, Lithuanian also has a special status: as a heritage language, insofar as its testimonial value for Indo-European studies is inestimable, and its complexity and archaism are often presented as elements of prestige, Lithuanian is rather reserved for diachronic (historical) studies.
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For my part, I chose from the outset to study it from a synchronic perspective and on themes relevant to any living language. This was important, on the one hand, from the point of view of current Lithuanian language teaching, in order to shed new light on the data and identify effective explanatory sources for students at Inalco. Secondly, my aim was to study Lithuanian from an areal perspective and to be able to draw parallels with Russian, which implied constructing spaces of comparison. Finally, I wanted to integrate Lithuanian into the theoretical linguistics research program in which I was enrolled, which was based on describing languages that were as diverse as possible. It was with this in mind that I joined Sedyl in 2015, because it offered a diversity of languages and approaches that I could no longer find in my original laboratory.


- As a researcher, what are your areas of research?

I'm particularly interested in polysemy, i.e. the question of the semantic identity of forms and their capacity to be "deformed", to be able to say something else, depending on the context in which they are used. I'm also very interested in synonymy. What's fascinating is that microscopic analysis of forms, i.e. in the diversity of their uses, taking into account the textual context (properties of neighboring words) and situational context (who's speaking, where, with whom, for what purpose, in view of what, etc.) most often brings out the full extent of their meaning.In this way, what is usually treated as a "stylistic variant" or a "question of usage" can in fact be explained linguistically.




















































This kind of research informs us, at a general level, about how meaning is constructed in a language, and, when we can cross-check the results with comparable phenomena in other languages, it enables us to advance hypotheses about how language works - hence the importance of research articulated around joint projects in a multilingual team. And then, of course, for me, the descriptions made have a direct application in the teaching of Lithuanian, since they provide explanatory principles for students, helping them to understand, and therefore to appropriate the language, relieving the effort of memorizing "blindly", ...because "that's the way it is".


- Any projects? In research or publications to come?

I have two upcoming books. One is a book in tribute to Mr. Chicouène, who left us in 2017. The volume, to be published in September 2020 by Presses de l'Inalco[1], will include republications of his seminal articles (which are no longer accessible because they date back to pre-digital times), articles by some of his former students that show the topicality of his research, and numerous testimonials from his friends, former students and colleagues.

The second is a collective work on notions of temporality and aspect, which I coordinated with our much-lamented colleague J. Thach, a specialist in Khmer, who left us prematurely last month. The collection[2], which will be dedicated to him, provides a set of targeted insights into what linguists mean by these notions, based on analyses of the theories currently dominating linguistics, as well as specific forms in Bunong, Finnish, French, Khmer, Lithuanian, Russian or Hopi, with a rereading of B. L Whorf.

Now I'm also planning to publish my thesis. My specialization in Lithuanian immediately after my defense and the years it took to develop a research program on this language did not leave me the time to do so. However, it contains many previously unpublished descriptions that deserve to be disseminated. This is my next objective, which is part of a new period: after years devoted almost exclusively to Lithuanian, I now intend to build more bridges with Russian, and, more broadly, focus more on the areal side of my research. This year, we opened a master's seminar in Fenno-Balto-Slavic linguistics, which for the time being brings together our linguist colleagues specializing in Finnish, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Russian and Ukrainian (and Lithuanian, of course). This seminar, which is a first in Europe, is proving to be an extremely stimulating framework in which to carry out this type of project. 

-You have been tasked by the president of Inalco with setting up a think-tank on "small" enrolment teaching. 
What was the thinking behind it?

Yes, Jean-François Huchet asked me to lead a think tank on this issue as soon as he was appointed. It's a crucial issue for our school, where most of the 100 languages taught are "small languages". The aim is to show our supervisory body that we are proactive on this issue, and that we have put in place a number of measures to attract new students to these languages.

The idea, of course, is not to launch into a race for attractiveness - a losing battle - but to implement all the concrete actions we can think of to develop access to our training courses. And the ultimate aim is to reaffirm Inalco's place in the national and international landscape, and to justify the existence of languages with small enrolments: to make it clear that for us, who carry out a mission that is unique in Europe and beyond, reasoning in quantitative terms is not appropriate.

































I think we're in a pretty good position to make ourselves heard. Everywhere, the consequences of university reforms and cuts in funding have led to the closure of courses and pathways with the lowest attendance, and there is a general awareness that whole swathes of knowledge and knowledge of the world are being jeopardized. Highlighted as early as 2012 at the Assises de l'ESR, this risk is now clearly recognized, I believe, and the think tanks launched on the subject by the CPU (Conférence des Présidents d'Université) or the CPCNU (Conférence des Présidents des sections CNU) confirm it. Inalco has an important role to play in these debates, and Jean-François Huchet was right to make this issue a priority.


- Can you tell us about the intellectual path taken to produce new solutions for Inalco?

The think tank is open to everyone. There's no question of limiting entry to colleagues of "small" languages! Inalco is a whole, its unrivalled strength lies in the coming together of all its languages, and it's all together that we need to think about our potential. The first two plenary meetings brought to light a dozen or so themes, from distance learning to continuing education, from communication to the promotion of our language methods and the reflection on our partnerships. 
So far, we've been working in small workshops of a dozen colleagues on distance learning, and are in the process of finalizing our summary, which includes an initial proposal for concrete action. As soon as the lock-in period is over, I'll schedule a new plenary meeting to present these results and launch a new workshop. The next theme will undoubtedly be our training offer. We need to think about this well in advance of the new accreditation, so that we can prepare calmly.

We'll need to think about how we can attract new audiences, but also how we can better circulate our audience between our languages. Two years ago, I was responsible for setting up a new bachelor's degree program, known as "bilangue", which many of us supported. This license enables students to learn a second language, known as a "minor", from L2 onwards. I'm a great believer in this type of project, which takes advantage of Inalco's unique richness - the diversity of its languages - and places it in a field where it can't compete.
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Of course, we need to give careful thought to the implementation of this type of training: selection of courses and useful hourly volume for the minor language in relation to the targeted level of proficiency, feasibility for the student, envisaged outlets, etc. This is a discussion we need to have, and one we'll need to continue. This is one of the many discussions we need to have! 
I have no doubt that collective reflection, in this area as in others, will lead to the emergence of totally new and promising ideas. And perhaps it will even lead to the choice of a practical and finally rewarding denomination for these languages that are all too often described, by way of shorthand, as "small".


Hélène de Penanros MCF HDR de lituanien, Inalco - Sedyl


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[1] "Un homme rare" : Michel Chicouène (1936-2017), Études russes et lituaniennes, R. Camus et H. de Penanros (éds), Presses de l'Inalco.
[2] Du temps et de l'aspect dans les langues. Approches linguistiques de la temporalité, H. de Penanros and J. Thach (eds.), Peter Lang.
[2] Du temps et l'aspect dans les langues. 



 

Simon Ebersolt, young multi-primed Inalco researcher.

- What was your initial training, your background before Inalco?

I studied literature, particularly philosophy, in the hypokhâgne and khâgne at the Lycée Jules Ferry (Paris), followed by a master's degree in philosophy at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.

- How did you come to choose your language of study? Were you tempted by one or more other languages? 

Strictly speaking, it wasn't a "choice", as Japanese is my mother tongue, the one I've always spoken to my mother. Japanese language and culture were not "discoveries" for me. Rather, I was "thrown" into the bath, so to speak, unintentionally: it was my mother who started speaking to me in the language. 

I was tempted for a time by Arabic, under the influence of my dear master Christian Jambet, my philosophy teacher in khâgne and a great specialist in Islamic philosophy.

- How did your discovery of Japanese philosophy in particular come about? 

During my philosophical training, which focused on European philosophers (from the Ancients to the Moderns), I was curious to know what was out there on the Japanese side. Christian Jambet, who knew I had Japanese skills, also encouraged me to look at the Japanese side.

- Your arrival at Inalco? As a student, doctoral student? 

Precisely, it was at Inalco, as a Master's student, that I re-discovered the Japanese language and culture, in a more intellectualized and nuanced way. My relationship with Japan had been rather carnal and instinctive, despite a certain knowledge of the language and numerous visits to the country. Although Japanese was "given" to me by my mother, it wasn't served to me fresh and ready either, and I took it up wholeheartedly at Inalco.

Indeed, it was Inalco, and in particular my dissertation and thesis supervisor, Emmanuel Lozerand, who led me to become more sensitive to the multiple nuances of words and phrases, to the back-and-forth between languages, in my case Japanese, French and German. At the same time, I rediscovered the French language, with all its nuances and dynamics. This awareness of language was heightened by my study of Kuki Shûzô (1888-1941) and Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), philosophers who were very attentive to the nuances of words. A very good alchemy emerged from my training at Inalco and my philosophical research.


- When and how did your research career begin? what year? where?

It depends on how you define "researcher"! If a PhD student is a researcher, then I embarked on the journey in 2011, the PhD being rather that gray area where you're mistaken for a student as well as a researcher; if you have to be a doctor to be a researcher, then it's November 2017. Last year, I was introduced to the students as an apprentice researcher. You could even say that you learn to research all your life, because research and its learning go hand in hand: just as you learn to swim by swimming, you learn to research by researching.

In this sense, I began my research career as a Master's student at Paris 1 and then at Inalco, when I undertook research on the reception of Henri Bergson (1859-1941) in Japan, which enabled me to make a smooth entry into a field I still knew very little about (the Japanese twentieth century and its philosophers) by drawing on the European philosophy with which I was more familiar, in particular Bergson. In particular, I worked on the interpretations given by Miki Kiyoshi (1897-1945) and Kuki Shûzô. This angle of attack seems to me to have been the right one, since modern Japanese philosophy, in all its variety, has been built up through a constant and highly developed dialogue with European philosophy. In carrying out this research, I have been careful to contextualize this dialogue - for it is always in context that philosophers dialogue and conceptualize - and I have translated texts by Miki and Kuki that express this dialogue. Philosophers no longer write in dialogue, but they are always implicitly in dialogue with other philosophers when they write. Translation thus enables us to be concrete, showing us that philosophical originality and the process of conceptualization, i.e. universalization, emerge from tête-à-tête between philosophers and, more broadly, from a precise intellectual and philosophical context (without, however, reducing ourselves to it), which enables us to go beyond, for example, the abstract opposition between West and East or, what amounts to much the same thing, their synthesis. Moreover, while translating, I became more aware that philosophers themselves translate each other during the act of conceptualization.
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- Your attachment to the CEJ / IFRAE research center.

During my doctorate, I was attached to the CEJ, then, since this year, to IFRAE (Inalco/Université de Paris /CNRS), notably in the Groupe d'étude de philosophie japonaise, of which I am co-director with Saitô Takako and Kuroda Akinobu.


- As a researcher, what are your lines of research? What does your research work focus on? 

I'm continuing my research into the notion of community in the context of the history of Japanese philosophy from the 1920s to the 1950s, in particular by delving into the question of the articulation between the dual "we" and the collective "we", i.e. between, on the one hand, the phenomenological community between individuals - notably the contingent phenomenon of the encounter between different individuals - and, on the other hand, the collective community, whether social, religious or political. In the medium term, I am planning a history of modern philosophy encompassing both Japan and East Asia (notably China) and, in the longer term, a philosophy and philosophical history of the common.
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Philosophy being a work on words as an act of conceptualization, consideration of the phenomenon of translation will be crucial in thinking about the common. Translation is in fact always a phenomenon of the simultaneity of the common and the different: an encounter between different languages, but at the same time the very act of seeking and finding commonality between two words or phrases from different linguistic communities. The case of modern Japanese philosophy is fascinating insofar as the emergence of concepts and this work of commonality took place in a context of polyglossia, between European languages (notably German, English, French) and Japanese, with its grammatical structure, its Japanese words (wago 和語) and Sino-Japanese words (kango 漢語) - words originating directly from China or created in Japan from sinograms in Sino-Japanese reading.
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I'd like to take this opportunity to stress that translation will save us from elucidations and fictions, notably abstract universalism, which is in fact nothing more than the imposition of a culture, notably a particular language, on the world, and which is the other name for imperialism. In my opinion, Inalco - and I'd like to add: France - has a real, eminently political role to play in resisting Anglo-Saxon cultural and linguistic imperialism, not only to illustrate and defend the world's cultural and linguistic plurality, but also, through translation between languages, what they have in common. Translation is not the simple identity between two elements of different languages, but their commonality, which goes hand in hand with a certain gap, a slight difference in nuance between them. The act of translation is uni-versal in the literal sense, an act of orientation "towards" the indeterminate "One", and not the mere imposition on the world of "a" particular culture or "a" particular language. This project could be called concrete universalism, one that takes cultural and linguistic contexts seriously, without yielding on the universalist demand for knowledge, which presupposes that there is something in common between individuals, cultures and nations, understandable by everyone. Indeed, let's not forget that the word "university" comes from universus: "universal".

-Your thesis has won numerous awards. How did you feel about it? 

At the time, I was stunned, with a sense of unreality and floating. Then I thought of those who supported me during my PhD, my thesis supervisors Emmanuel Lozerand and Frédéric Fruteau de Laclos, my professors at Inalco and Kyôto University where I studied for five years, my friends and family. Finally, I won't lie: I feel a great deal of pride, but a pride that obliges.

From the point of view of my research, these disciplinary and areal recognitions encourage me, despite obstacles of all kinds, to persevere in my path, in the method that has revealed itself through my dual training in philosophy and Japanese studies: that of the universalist requirement of the concept and of taking into account the historical and cultural context.
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- What are your plans? The publication of your thesis?

In the first semester, I'm taking advantage of a post-doctoral contract at the École française d'Extrême-Orient to advance my new research, notably with a short stay in Japan, then I'll return to teach at Inalco in the second semester.
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My thesis is to be published by Vrin, in the collection "Bibliothèque d'histoire de la philosophie". If I'm not mistaken, this will be the first book in the collection devoted to a non-Western philosopher.
I'm also preparing, as part of the Groupe d'étude de philosophie japonaise project, the publication of a collection of translations of Kuki's texts, those of philosophy, but also aesthetics, poetics, and even politico-cultural, in order to show the richness of his work.

Finally, I've been toying with the idea of writing a short introductory book on modern Japanese philosophy, aimed at non-specialists. More broadly, my aim is to contribute to a better understanding of Japanese philosophy in France, while maintaining strong contacts with the Japanese research community.

Simon Ebersolt
Co-director of the Japanese Philosophy Study Group (IFRAE, Inalco/Université de Paris/CNRS)
http://www.inalco.fr/enseignant-chercheur/simon-ebersolt

 

What was your initial training?

My background is in the social sciences, with a DEA in Social Sciences from EHESS. This multidisciplinary DEA was in partnership with the Ecole normale supérieure (ENS). I then studied ethnology and clinical psychology.


What was your career path before Inalco and what experiences do you draw from it?

My career path before Inalco was mainly in the continuing education sector. In Greta (continuing education within the Education Nationale) for the last three years, but also as a career path advisor with Opacif such as FONGECIF.

I have also provided individual career transition support for employees and jobseekers.

I have followed several paths that have shaped who I am today, but it was through ethnopsychiatry that I first came to work with people in great difficulty, at the start of my professional life. I've worked with a wide range of disadvantaged groups, and this psycho-social support has given me an extra edge when it comes to helping these so-called "fragile" groups move towards training or professional integration.
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Another part of my life was spent in Egypt. I was able to develop a very personal activity, mainly creative, working with local craftspeople. I stayed for 7 years and lived in contact with Egyptians from all walks of life and all walks of life. Whether in Luxor, Sinai or Cairo.
When I came back from Egypt, I had a lot of fun. On my return from Egypt, I pursued a professional activity linked to crafts: I marketed a range of Fair Trade decorative products.

Then I returned to the field of vocational training, then continuing education.

So you arrived at Inalco at the beginning of July... Why did you choose Inalco?

The job offer I responded to highlighted the different sectors of activity in which I was already working as a continuing education consultant. It seemed like a professional opportunity I could seize.

In July, the students were no longer there, but the administrative team at the Continuing Education department and Jean Tardy, the department's pedagogical director, were very present and kind to me. I had the time to get an overview of the department's activities, familiarize myself with the management software and prepare for the new school year, with the aim of starting in September to everyone's maximum satisfaction.

You're in charge of Continuing Education, what are your duties?

My job is to ensure that the common service for continuing education welcomes people wishing to enter training under the best possible conditions. I supervise the enrolment of individuals and salaried employees, and organize the start of classes for both trainees and teachers.
I've also been asked to take care of a number of other tasks. I've also been asked to develop training initiatives that can reach a wider range of audiences, as well as companies, and that enable synergies between initial and continuing training. 
Finally, and this is also essential, the department must be able to reap the benefits of developing a wider range of (hybrid) training courses, or even be the driving force behind innovative initiatives, while maintaining the intention of covering a wider range of languages or fields that may be less profitable than others.

What are the challenges facing the projects?

The first challenge is to ensure that continuing education is no longer the "fifth wheel", but that all people (teaching staff, salaried employees, students, jobseekers, etc.) are involved in improving and developing their skills. It's a question of finding one's bearings, taking steps towards a more appropriate professional evolution or reconversion, and training in fields that provide a dynamic, driving force to advance professionally towards projects that are as close as possible to what we're looking for. Lifelong learning has both a personal and an economic dimension. It presupposes that each individual is supported in his or her approach by staff who are attentive to societal developments and the economic challenges of tomorrow.

Continuing training projects are following this path. First of all, we want to develop our training offer for foreign students who come to us for training in "French as a foreign language", with a view to obtaining a certification called the diplôme de Compétences en langue (DCL).

We also want to extend the range of training courses we offer to foreign students who come to us for training in "French as a foreign language". We are also expanding our range of certifications: DCL (Arabic, Chinese, Russian), HSK (Chinese), JLPT (Japanese) to more people via the Compte Personnel de Formation. At least for the DCL at present. Learning a language, and using your CPF hours to do so, is easy today with le compte d'activite and will be increasingly so with the new vocational training guidelines that came into force this summer.

Another project close to our hearts is e-learning training. We have joined forces with Inalco's ICTE unit and Luc Deheuvels to offer a hybrid training program (online and face-to-face) based on the MOOC "Arabic language contact kit", transformed by the FUN platform (using open source technology) into a SPOC (Small Private Online Course), i.e. interactive online training with a limited number of participants. Together, we're beginning to see what format it will take, and who and what companies it will target.

In the meantime, we need to define a number of elements (cost calculation, legal framework, sale price, communication...) so that these two projects can see the light of day in early 2019.

After 7 years spent in Egypt, so you have a certain affinity with this culture? Can you tell us more about it?

Yes, I had taken up (by force of circumstance) Egyptian Arabic. Unfortunately, I've lost my ability to express myself, to talk about rain and shine in Arabic.
In the second semester, I'd like to go back to school to regain the intellectual liveliness that comes with speaking several languages. At least, that's what it seemed to me when I spoke three languages to different people.

In Egypt, I learned to live in the Sinai, in the mountains with the Bedouins of St Catherine in the South Sinai. Several months of frugal living enabled me to work on various projects with Bedouin women, beadworkers and embroiderers using ancestral techniques. This magical place and these wonderful people with their harsh living conditions have helped me to evolve and to look at life in a different way. I'm absolutely fascinated by desert mountains and deserts... I'm a fan of travel literature and travel writers like: Wilfred Thesiger, Theodore Monod, Henri de Monfreid, Alexandra David-Néel, Nicolas Bouvier...
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But I'm curious, and anthropology has always been my passion: North and West Africa with its various therapeutic rituals for treating mental illness, India with its traditional Ayurvedic medicine, the myths of the creation of the world of all peoples, on all continents...
. The world is so rich, there's so much to learn!

What was your initial training, your background before Inalco?

After obtaining my DEA in Robotics and Intelligent Systems at the University of Paris 6, I failed to finance my thesis and had to resort to accepting food jobs.
After two years in the telephony department at Carrefour, with a wealth of experience that still serves me today, I had enough savings to take a professional training course as a JAVA language developer at IFOCOP.

What were your first professional steps before Inalco?

Hired by the company where I had completed my practical training, I transformed their point-of-sale management software to adapt it to the requirements and technologies of today's market. With a small staff, I was in daily contact with the users, and thus better able to respond to their needs.

How did your arrival at Inalco go?
I learned that Inalco was looking for an application development and deployment engineer, to upgrade its information system and offer new digital services.
The position presented interesting challenges, in a prestigious establishment, so I threw myself into the void and joined the PLC in 2012, a few months after it opened.

You're a "software engineering engineer", what does your job involve? What are your missions? 

My job involves developing software, i.e. taking part in all or part of the development phases from design to deployment, then on to evolution (new features, improvements, patches).
Often, this involves adapting an existing service to the specifics of our establishment, to make the most of our resources.
Some of the work is done behind the scenes, ensuring that existing services continue to function and are updated to guard against threats.
Potentially, we have to interact with all the other departments, to provide IT support wherever it can be useful.

Do you also have other activities inside or outside Inalco?

I sing as a tenor in the Inalco choir; it's a powerful moment when students, teachers and staff step aside to become one and make the languages and cultures of the world vibrate.
To relax, I practice yoga and play board games with the API (Association des personnels de l'Inalco), whose board I have also joined.

Outside of work, I spend time with my children.
 

You're a "pure Langues'O product". Why did you choose Inalco?

When I was fifteen, I decided to make my career at Langues'O (the Institute was better known by that name at the time). I'd heard a lot about it as a child, I knew some students, a teacher, I'd talked about it with my Russian teachers in secondary school... It was a real vocation for me.

After my baccalauréat L, I immediately enrolled for Langues'O. It was a no-brainer for me! For the record, I had even refused to do the Ravel procedure, which horrified my teachers, so sure was I of my choice.

You have an undeniable attraction for languages and civilizations, so what curriculum did you follow?

I've always loved learning new languages, and I was already passionate about Asia, its history, art, cultures and traditions... If the sounds of tonal languages charmed me, it was the written word even more that made the difference. Chinese characters, in particular, amazed me.

So, first I learned Burmese and Chinese, then I continued with Chinese (thanks to the enthusiasm of my teacher, Mme Fabienne Marc, to whom I'm very grateful). Then I branched out into Vietnamese, all as a great beginner... Knowing that I had already done Russian (and Ancient Greek) with passion in secondary school.

At Inalco, I graduated with a master's degree in Chinese just before the transition to LMD. At the same time, always a fan of double courses, I took a bachelor's degree in ethnology at Paris V. I also enrolled in the first year of a DREI (equivalent to today's M1 HEI), mainly out of curiosity, but without validating it: the contemporary world wasn't for me, so I went back to devoting myself to my dissertation, which was on Chinese gardens.
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An attraction to other world languages or cultures?

I am, of course, passionate about China and mainland Southeast Asia, but not only that. Northern Europe and the Slavic world also attract me greatly, perhaps because of some of my origins, but also because of the magic exuded by the melodies of these languages.

Less exotic, but central to my daily life, English holds a very important place among the languages I love and practice. In fact, a trip to Scotland left a lasting impression on me, and I'd love to learn a Gaelic language as well.

What were your professional experiences before Inalco?

Apart from a couple of baby-sittings that I wasn't too keen on, and my first "real job" as a cashier, my professional experiences outside Inalco revolve around languages and contacts.

For ten years or so, I had the great good fortune to take part in international soccer and handball tournaments, not as a sportswoman (I must confess that it wasn't my love of sport that drew me to this job), but as a guide-interpreter for a Dutch association. I accompanied around fifteen groups of young sportsmen and women, each time over several days. I was able to rub shoulders with Dutch, Americans, Danes, Scots, Belgians, Germans, Koreans and Romanians, and talk to the teams and their coaches, and these contacts were very enriching. Questions about cultural differences came thick and fast, and it was fascinating! In fact, I took Dutch courses at the eponymous institute after I started working with the association, because I was so keen to be able to speak something other than English to the teams I was most often entrusted with. Saying a few words in the other person's language, even just trying, changes the relationship and encourages the dialogue that follows.

I've also been tutoring young Chinese (Wenzhou) recently arrived in France, through the ASLC association. Here too, I benefited greatly from the exchanges with some of my young students, who had a curious, and sometimes critical, eye for their host country.

Tell us about your career at Inalco...

Student, temporary employee, contract employee, permanent employee... it's been an upwardly mobile career path!

Initially, of course, like many people, I thought about teaching, but in the end I worked as an administrative assistant to pay for my studies, and this played a big part in my change of direction. I started at the Division de la Scolarité, rue de Lille, first in registration, then in the Service des Bourses, trained by André Voeuk and Abdallah Ahmed, my fellow pillars of the department at the time. But I wanted to go further, and as early as 2007, I began looking into the lack of documentation on administrative procedures for students.

In 2008, encouraged by Mr. Bayle, the Director General of Services, I set up the Guichet unique d'information (one-stop information desk) within the brand new Direction des Études. I loved working first with students, then with teachers, which reinforced my decision to take competitive exams.

And so, in 2008, I passed the SASU competitive examination and became a civil servant, appointed to this noble institution... What a stroke of luck! 
In 2012, following maternity leave, I was invited to work at Student Life, where I managed associations and their cultural projects. And since 2015, I've been lucky enough to work in the Training Department.

As passionate as ever, I continue to take as many civilization courses as possible alongside my work. Working here also gives me the chance to remain a (very part-time) student in my chosen field! 
Briefly describe your current position, missions and responsibilities

As I was saying, I've been working at the Training Department (DIFOR) since 2015, where I'm Stéphane Faucher's deputy.

I am Training Coordinator: I work with the presidency (MM Forlot and Samuel, Mmes Bottineau and Rasoloniaina) on everything concerning our bachelor's, master's and institutional diploma offerings; I act as secretary to the Conseil des formations et de la vie étudiante (CFVE); I check and post brochures online; I manage requests for bachelor's and master's level conferences; I take part in discussions on future bachelor's and master's mock-ups; and I take part in certain discussions with the rectorat, the Université Sorbonne Paris Cité (USPC), the Commission nationale de la certification professionnelle (CNCP), the HCERES and Paris VII. I can also be consulted on agreements with partner establishments.

Within DIFOR, I also oversee the "Commissions & Geographical Areas Pole", in which Rachida Benchabane and Hae-Lee Shim work with me on the Cross-disciplinary Commission and the implementation of an expanded cross-disciplinary offer, on the Masters Commission and its admissions commission (including the implementation of trouvermonmaster.gouv.fr), as well as in support of the departments (secretarial support for departmental councils, auditing of services, answering questions from directors and deputy directors...)

Training is at the heart of the school's life; it is thoughtful, multiple and changing, which makes this position exciting.

Do you have any other activities outside Inalco?

Outside of work, but still at Inalco, I take part in the chorale which will be doing its second concert on May 31!

An active member of an association dedicated to children's literature since 2005, I contribute to an online encyclopedia (working hard on English-language sources) and publish thematic news on a regular basis. I also manage a number of partnerships. What's more, I organize two or three meetings a year, with a wide range of activities, for the association's members. 
And...my three elves!
 

What was your initial training before Inalco?

After obtaining a DEA in Soviet and East European Studies from the Institut d'Études Politiques (IEP) in Paris, I prepared a doctoral thesis at Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne on a page of Franco-Ukrainian history in the 18th century, under the direction of Daniel Beauvois.

How did you get started at Inalco? 

I was a lecturer for almost ten years and only joined Inalco as a senior lecturer in 2012. So, I wasn't really discovering the house.

As a historian, what are your areas of research?

I'm currently working on issues relating to the Ukrainian famine (Holodomor) 1932-1933: circumstances, perception abroad and, in particular, in France, but also on testimonies, among others, literary.
An international colloquium on "The Great Famine in Ukraine - Holodomor: knowledge and recognition" was the first I had organized on my arrival at Inalco, in November 2013.

Do you have an attraction for other world languages and cultures or other disciplines?

Yes, of course - our Institute offers unprecedented opportunities! What's dearest to my heart today is to bring back a language that is no longer taught, but which was one of the reasons for the creation of the Language School: Crimean Tatar. Today, this language and this culture, after having been tested in the 20th century, with the deportation decided by Stalin and the impossibility of returning to Crimea for almost half a century, this people is again today persecuted and its language threatened.
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Tell us about your work as a translator, what are your favorite subjects?

I've had the pleasure of translating a number of very different contemporary Ukrainian authors, for very different publishers too, ranging from small structures to large houses. I don't have a favorite subject and I'm happy not to be confined to one type of writing or one author. It's delightful and stimulating to confront the challenges posed by different authors who each have their own style and personality, between the postmodernist work of Youri Andrukhovych, the feminist of Oksana Zaboujko*, the historico-ethnographic of Maria Matios, urban by Serhiy Jadan or Central-European by Sophia Andrukhovych.
If there were a criterion, it would be the quality of the literary work.

Do you have any other activities related to the Ukrainian world?

With a colleague from Inalco, Iaroslav Lebedynsky, I direct a collection Présence ukrainienne published by l'Harmattan. In its fifteen years of existence, it has published over thirty titles, covering various aspects of Ukrainian history or current affairs, literature, theater, etc.
. One of our latest titles is the translation of the Récits of Oleg Sentsov, the Ukrainian filmmaker unjustly condemned to a heavy sentence in Russia and whose release the international community is calling for.

This year, I was also in charge of programming the Ukrainian stand at the Paris Book Fair, and I found it fascinating to think about the themes, compose the meetings and so on. I'm happy to represent Inalco in various projects in the provinces or in Paris, but also to join Inalco in cultural projects, like in November 2017,as part of the festival The Weekend in the East, which honored the Ukrainian capital, where a meeting with Ukrainian writers and journalists took place within the walls of the Institute. I hope this collaboration with the festival will continue.

*Find an excerpt from Oksana Zaboujko's novel: "Explorations on the terrain of Ukrainian sex", translated from Ukrainian by Iryna Dmytrychyn in the magazine Langues O no 3.

What was your initial training before Inalco?

I have a scientific background punctuated by a PhD in automatic control defended long ago in Toulouse. After a post-doc in the USA, I was hired as a computer scientist by a small Parisian IT services company, which hired me for long assignments in industrial environments. Yes, contract labor and outsourcing were already in vogue! For a good ten years, I scoured a number of industrial sites in the Paris region, many of which have now disappeared... It was a rich experience, both professionally and as a human being. I then left Paris for Montpellier and a small medical electronics company.

How did your arrival at Inalco go?

Following the bankruptcy of this company and my redundancy, I was entitled to a financed retraining course. With my curiosity for languages, I saw an opportunity to redirect my activity from IT to languages. It was at Langues O' that I finally found the course I was looking for, combining language and IT: the DESS in multilingual engineering at CRIM (Centre de Recherche Informatique Multilingue). The 1993-1994 year was a busy one, with Arabic and Nahuatl courses as well.

At the time, Inalco was preparing its bicentenary, including an exhibition at Paris' Hôtel de Ville. CRIM was to present a multimedia animation entitled "Ciel, Miroir des Cultures", illustrating celestial myths in a dozen languages and cultures taught at Inalco. That's how I got my first contract to produce it - with a colleague Pascal Potron. It was the first contract of a long series... as is still the case today!

Tell us about your long career at Inalco...

At the time, CRIM was looking for a computer scientist. Its director, Monique Slodzian, offered me the job of managing the computer room for Inalco's two computer linguistics courses: CRIM's DESS and the Master's degree in TAL (Automatic Language Translation).

At the time, the European Union had a program funding the promotion of multilingualism. For CRIM - then a very small team, with few resources, but very active - it was an opportunity for projects and funding, and for me to supplement my meagre part-time work. And so, somewhat by chance, I plunged into language didactics, on the occasion of a 2-year European project based on a CD-Rom for learning Modern Greek. A Greek colleague, Anthippi Potolia, was responsible for the design and pedagogical content, while I was in charge of the IT and multimedia aspects. The project resulted in a prototype interactive course entitled "Athos, a discovery of modern Greek".

A few years later, on the basis of this work, Inalco was awarded a major 3-year European project for Bulgarian, Slovak and Slovenian language learning, for which I was responsible for technical management. In 2007, three multimedia packages (interactive CD + book) were published by Editions l'Asiathèque. It's been quite a collective experience, with its ups and downs, but we've made it... I'd like to extend my warmest thanks to all the colleagues, here and abroad, who embarked on this adventure. 
In 2006, an IGR position was created at the ERTIM - the team's new name after the merger with the automatic language processing (ALP) curricula. After passing the competitive examination, I continued my activities, but this time as a salaried employee, after a dozen years of precarious contracts...
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Since then, part of my activity has consisted of valorizing these achievements and the underlying course model, extending them to other languages (Estonian, for example) and scripts, and undertaking their tedious migration to an internet medium. And another, to explore the possibilities of NLP to create resources for language learning. Thus, based on an idea from Estonian teacher Antoine Chalvin, we created an online generator of Estonian gap-fill exercises, based on a corpus of "parallel" French and Estonian texts, "morphologically annotated".
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Today, I'm focusing more on helping learners to read in a foreign language, or more concretely: how NLP tools can help them to read.

Time has gone by and our little team has grown, but it has remained as supportive, fraternal and enthusiastic as ever. I remember two colleagues who were very close to our team. Abdoulaye Diarra, who enchanted us so much with his ineffable Malian stories, and my friend Mwalimu Jean Dedieu Karangwa, who recently passed away.

You're a research engineer in the ERTIM team, what are your lines of research, what does your work focus on?

My main area of work is language didactics, i.e. I design - usually in collaboration with teachers - applications to support online language learning, and I produce them. Some are classic, requiring only web development skills - for example, the creation of interactive pedagogical components or the on-line publishing of language courses. Others require the use of language technologies (such as automatic morphological or syntactic analyzers) - for example, the automatic generation of exercises, or the provision of foreign-language reading aids.
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As a research engineer in a team, one of my tasks is also to respond - according to my skills - to some of its technical needs, in particular for the constitution and processing of corpora, to solve the fantastic problems of character coding; to help it respond to possible national or international calls for projects. I also teach a number of courses as part of our master's program: a few years ago on a "typology of scripts and their digital coding" and today on "information retrieval".

Do you have a particular attraction or specialization for a language or civilization taught at Inalco?

When it comes to languages, I'd define myself more as a butterfly. I just have to get by on a day-to-day basis, with this or that language. But what I really enjoy is exploring their specificities, both structural (morphology and "grammar") and superficial (writing). Out of curiosity, of course, but also out of professional necessity. For my applications in didactics or on multilingual corpora, I needed a few ideas about linguistic "variations" and writing systems, and sometimes even more...
This led me to develop a number of ideas on the subject. This led me to become somewhat familiar with Greek, Hungarian, Russian and Arabic...

Do you have any other activities at Inalco?

I've been a staff representative on the Comité Technique* (CT) and the Comité d'Hygyène, Sécurité et des Conditions de Travail (CHSCT) de l'Inalco for the past fifteen years.
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* It examines questions relating to the organization and operation of departments. The committee examines issues relating to staffing levels, jobs and skills, working methods, compensation policy guidelines, training, professional integration, professional equality and the fight against discrimination.

















 

What is your initial training?

I studied history at the University of Orléans, but didn't want to be a teacher: I couldn't see myself facing teenagers who weren't very motivated by the subject every day!
On the advice of a friend, who was already studying archives, I did an internship at the Departmental Archives in Orléans to find out more about the profession. It was a revelation! A few months later, I enrolled in the History and Archives Master's program at the University of Angers. 
And now you're an archivist! What attracts you to this profession?

I came to archives out of a love of written heritage and paper. I feel at home in a profession that demands rigor and a spirit of synthesis, and in which my sense of organization is often put to the test. I like discovering how an administration works, as well as investigating (finding information). It also enables me to stay close to my initial training by writing historical texts, for example.
The archivist, while firmly anchored in the present, since he or she has to keep abreast of developments in administration, society and historical research, has one foot in the past and the other in the future, which I find fascinating!

What were your first professional steps before Inalco?

When I left university, I did two 6-month contracts at the Archives départementales du Loir-et-Cher and then at the Direction nationale de la formation de la Poste. I then joined the Archives départementales de l'Aisne as assistant to the director and head of contemporary archives. For a young graduate, this position was a real opportunity. It enabled me to learn about the workings of government departments and the administrative language essential to my profession; and above all, to acquire a great deal of experience in the field, in terms of archival science, management and service management.
After more than eight years, I joined the Archives de l'Aisne as an assistant to the director and in charge of contemporary archives. After more than 8 years, I wanted to discover another stratum of the French administrative "mille-feuilles" and took over as head of the Epernay Municipal Archives. I stayed there for almost 6 years. There, I rounded out my skills in conservation, but above all in promotion, as I oversaw the commemoration of the centenary of the Great War and created several exhibitions.

In the course of this rich professional career, have you had any outstanding experiences?

When I arrived at the Archives départementales de l'Aisne, my director announced that, a fortnight later, we were to run a 2-day archiving awareness training course for local civil servants. As the person in charge of contemporary archives, I was supposed to lead it. I was bombarded with a teacher with virtually no practical basis and therefore few examples in my bag. But that's what makes a course come alive. Fortunately, I was able to rely on my team and on what the person I was replacing had already put in place.
In the 8 years that followed, I ended up running dozens of training courses of this type, taking part in Master archives courses at the universities of Lille and Amiens, training courses for Archives de France and the Association of French Archivists... and I got a taste for the role of occasional trainer. I've been training and I'm still training. Life sometimes has a way of winking!

You've recently joined us, why did you choose Inalco? Did you have a particular attraction to a language or culture?

I applied to Inalco because it's a school that's always made me dream... I've always been drawn to Asian cultures, China, Vietnam... and especially Japan.
As early as middle school, I'd hoped to learn Japanese, but that wasn't possible. This frustration and the desire to take courses here have always remained in the back of my mind (or heart?). And now my dream has come true: I've just started a continuing education course in Japanese at Inalco! 
And there's a whole new world to discover: the university archives.

What can be found in the Inalco archives?

There are 3 types of documents in the Inalco archives:
- administrative archives relating to operations (strategy, finance, HR, communications, etc.);
and - administrative archives relating to teaching and learners (student files, study guides, etc.);
researchers' archives. - researcher archives 
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What are your missions?

My missions at Inalco are, I'd say, "classic". Archivists usually talk about the "5 Cs":

• Advice: helping departments to manage their files on a day-to-day basis, making a selection of what can be disposed of and what will be kept indefinitely;
• Collection: take charge of documents that departments no longer have an immediate need for;
• Categorization: describe these documents, reference them and organize them in relation to each other so that they can be easily found;
• Conservation: ensure that documents are not damaged, or have them disinfected/restored if necessary;
• Communication/Valorization: respond to requests for communications from departments, user research (students' justifications of entitlement, historical research), enhance documents by other means (conferences, writing historical texts, creating virtual or physical exhibitions, for example).

What are the challenges ahead?

First of all, to put procedures back in place so that Inalco performs well when it comes to archiving. But also, to pick up the backlog of documents that have been transferred to rue de Lille without having been listed in our database, while at the same time managing new flows. And to make room (regulatory eliminations), as the storage premises are saturated!
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Then there's digital: both in administrative terms, as certain procedures will be entirely dematerialized in the future, and for research, as a lot of data has been created, but its archiving has not yet been thought through.

Finally, in 2019, the institute will be celebrating 350 years since the creation of the "Jeunes de langues" school, and I'd like to be able to take part in this to enhance the archives and history of the establishment.

Anything else you'd like to know better?

I've been doing freestyle dance for 7 years. It's a practice, which could be described as meditative, that has opened up and continues to open up new horizons for me. And... I'm thinking of teaching it one day, so I've come full circle.
 

What was your initial training/background before Inalco?

Christine: During my art history studies, I discovered very different worlds during internships and vacations in art galleries, antique shops and libraries. My preference quickly turned to the library world, thanks to a first experience in the Prints and Photography Department of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), where I was able to put my studies into practice by working on the cataloguing of heritage works. My career then took a new and rewarding direction at the BnF's newly created Audiovisual Department.























Raphaëlle: After a degree in History, I took a CAPES in Documentation. While studying at L'IUFM de Paris Molitor, I had the opportunity to work as a student monitor at the Bibliothèque Sainte Geneviève, 20h00 a week. It was a real revelation! I could no longer see myself working in a secondary school, but in a university library. I then joined the Jussieu inter-university library as a contract librarian. 
How did your arrival at Inalco go?

Raphaëlle: I passed a competitive examination and arrived at Inalco in February 1999 at CERPAIM (Centre de ressources pédagogiques, Audiovisuel, Multimédia). It was in this department that I specialized in Audiovisual media. 
Christine: Quite naturally, after several vacancies in the library, I took a competitive examination myself, and arrived at Inalco in October 1999, just a few months after Raphaëlle. In fact, we don't come from the same village as Guy and Paul (TICE), but joined Inalco in the same department at virtually the same time!

Raphaëlle and Christine: At that time, CERPAIM already had a document collection. Thanks to our skills as documentalists, we both worked to set up a real documentary and acquisition policy with negotiated rights, which CERPAIM sorely lacked.

With the arrival of digital technology, how has the media library evolved?

Raphaëlle and Christine:At a time when ICTE (Information and Communication Techniques for Teaching) is developing, Inalco's ICTE pole with Pierre-Jean Vigny has given a new dimension to the media library.

The library is now equipped with a SIGB (Système intégré de gestion des Bibliothèques - integrated library management system) to enable cataloguing in line with bibliographic standards. This means we can offer home loans to our students, teachers and administrative staff. The catalog is available online at the media library. The catalog features 770 DVDs: cinematographic productions from 55 countries are represented across 6 geographical areas. Nearly 1,000 video and audio resources (symposia, conferences, interviews and cultural events) are available online (podcast). The former CERPAIM VHS collection, which we have partly preserved, is available for consultation on site only. The media library is also equipped with self-service computer workstations.

The digitization of the documentary collection and its networking have given rise to a new definition of the profession of documentalist specialized in audiovisual and digital resources.

Actually, what does this job involve?

Raphaëlle and Christine: Our missions are divided into several activities:

-acquiring documents with negotiated rights: in other words, we search directly with producers to acquire new documentary resources, and we negotiate with them the purchase of these documents. We also buy from distributors serving institutional and educational networks such as ADAV, COLACO and the CNRS video library. We are gradually replacing the old VHS collection with DVDs. We are working with teachers to enhance the media library's DVD collection. There's also a legal aspect to this, as we make users and technical staff aware of the legal sources (copyright).

-Intellectual and material handling of documents: In addition to arranging storage space for documents, we also carry out recolement (document inventory) and weeding (documents to be withdrawn from the documentary collection).

-consists of bibliographic analysis, abstracting, indexing and quotation. We use specific management software, e-Paprika, with a name that evokes oriental flavors, which enables us to track and loan documents. There's also an important relational dimension with our public.

Finally, we are in charge of indexing podcast resources (via a CMS-type publishing interface): more specifically, this involves managing editorial content and indexing Inalco's online video library.

At the heart of this multicultural audiovisual offering, do you have a particular attraction for one or more languages and cultures?

Christine: At the mediatheque, I'm more specifically in charge of the collection concerning Asia, the Pacific and Africa. I'm perhaps more sensitive to these cultures. What's more, I inevitably have an affinity with Chinese culture, as my husband is of Chinese origin! I'm familiar with the language, but I still haven't learned it, but I'm not giving up !!!!! Visits to exhibitions and museums, as well as my travels, are also great sources of encounters and discoveries.

Raphaëlle: I'm in charge of managing the documentary collection for Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, the Maghreb, the Near and Middle East. But my interest is not focused solely on these parts of the world. Culturally, I'm interested in art. On a family level, my dad, who lived in Cambodia for 2 years, gave me a taste for Khmer art. I'm also a fan of street art, and on my walks around Paris and London I've built up a fine photo library of graffiti by internationally renowned street artists working in public spaces all over the world.





















I'm also a fan of street art. 
Or for foreign cinema?

Christine: For me, film, whether fiction or documentary, has always been a subtle way of getting messages across and going further in one's thinking; the way it's shot, the set, the acting, the music, everything has its importance. Since my arrival at Inalco, I've discovered cinemas from all over the world. It's a real enrichment and a great way to approach cultures. It's difficult to make a selection, I like the cinema of Satyajit Ray as much for its realistic view of Indian society as for its King Hu (China) for his swordplay films, or the cinema of Hirokazu Kore-eda (Japan) for his films about human relationships. In short, the list is endless...

Raphaëlle: For my part, Iranian cinema is a wonderful discovery, especially the films of Jafar Panahi like Taxi Teheran. But I'm also sensitive to the contrasts of Korean cinema, from the noir thriller, Old Boy by Park Chan-wook to the more poetic one like Poetry by Lee Chang-dong.
 

You started in Grenoble ...

Indeed, I completed my thesis in 2012 in language sciences at Grenoble Alpes University. My thesis, under the supervision of Professors Elke Nissen and Christian Degache, focused on listening comprehension in Chinese as a foreign language using hybrid devices. I also taught Chinese for 7 years at the same university, while taking an active part in pedagogical engineering projects. 
And then you come to Inalco:

In September 2013, I arrived at Inalco as a lecturer (MCF) in Chinese. Since then, I've been a lecturer in oral Chinese in the Department of Chinese Studies, and I'm also a member of the Pluralité des Langues et des Identités : Didactique - Acquisition - Médiations (PLIDAM) research team.

I work on 2 axes: Language competence: construction and evaluation (axis 2) for which I am co-director, and on program A, Designing pedagogical tools from a plurilingual perspective (axis 5). My main field is Chinese didactics, I'm particularly interested in the role of micro-skills and strategies in the process of listening comprehension. I also work on the exploitation and application of ICTE (Information and Communication Technologies for Teaching) in the learning of Chinese.

Your students have told us a lot about your involvement in courses, and in particular about an intercultural digital project? 

As part of the master 1 "Advanced Chinese, Oral Comprehension and Expression" Chinese course, and for the third time this year, we offered students the choice between the traditional curriculum and participation in an international project entitled "Global Perspective via Short Film", which involves competing with other international academic institutions, to present a report in Chinese on a cultural or social theme. The project was spearheaded by the London School of Economics, whose main partners are Inalco and the University of Venice.

Each institution selects 3 stories, which it submits to participating students from other countries for evaluation. Students are graded on the quality of their reports, as well as on their active participation throughout the project, according to a pre-established schedule. This project is very important for our students and for Inalco. In addition to developing their linguistic skills, this innovative teamwork enables them to acquire greater autonomy in learning the Chinese language and culture, and to be able to assess themselves.

In addition, the Chinese Studies Department's collaboration with international partners is very fruitful in exchanging ideas to improve the quality of teaching. With strong support from the International Relations Department and the China Department, our two 2017 winners were able to travel to London for the awards ceremony. This mission was a great success, increasing the visibility and influence of Inalco and confirming, as a result, the quality of our training courses on an international scale!

Other projects to come?

Yes, we are currently setting up various projects around language platforms such as SpeakShake which will see the light of day in 2018. We are looking into the possibility of cooperating with the French department of Beijing Foreign Studies University (BFSU) to enable a language exchange, also via a platform, between Chinese and French students.

 

One before Inalco?

In 2012, I graduated with a scientific baccalaureate. I still have a keen interest in the "hard" sciences, but I have to admit that I never really considered pursuing higher education in this field. Before entering Inalco, I studied law for a year at the Université Panthéon-Assas. I quickly realized that this field, while interesting, was not for me. So I decided to turn to Inalco to study a subject I was much more passionate about: Korean studies.
























Why did you choose Inalco? 

Korean, like any other "rare" language, is not taught in many establishments. I chose Inalco because of the school's reputation, and its range of professional courses in business, international relations, communication and intercultural training, for example. This seems to me to be an essential tool for becoming an expert both in the region studied and in a particular professional field.

So it's Korean that appeals to you. What was your first encounter with this culture?

My first contact with Korea was through the expansion of popular culture, like the vast majority of students of Korean studies. But other cultural aspects quickly caught my attention. I'd say that my encounter with this culture, once I was at Inalco, confirmed my decision to put aside my legal studies and focus on a course that more closely resembled my own. 
Throughout my first year - and still today - I came to understand Korean culture from a number of different angles, which enabled me to form my own idea of it. I went to South Korea for the first time in 2014 during the summer. During that first visit, I realized that the country had a lot to offer, even more than I had imagined. The first time was when I arrived in a crowded, boutique-filled district; the second was a few minutes later when I arrived in Gangnam (강남), the city's most upscale district with large modern buildings, for example.
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In 2015, I had the opportunity to study for a year at Seoul National University (SNU, 서울대학교) as an exchange student. This experience enabled me to live in total immersion in Seoul, giving me a whole new perspective on the country. By being a permanent resident and studying there, I approached Korean culture from a totally different angle. It was also thanks to this university experience that certain project ideas germinated in my mind. For example, the sponsorship program, Inalco Buddy, which our association has set up, is directly inspired by similar programs at South Korean universities to welcome foreign students.

Now, I lack the experience to be able to claim to understand all the issues at stake in Korea - or should I say, the Koreas - going to the North so that I can make up my own mind and be able to talk about it legitimately.

A taste for travel, but also for student involvement. Tell us about your role at CSIE: 

As soon as I entered Inalco I wanted to get involved. I became a student representative for the Eurasia department - on which Korean studies depended before the creation of its own department - and in my second year, I joined the O'Korea association as a member of the travel pole. In 2016, I became an elected student member of the Korean Studies department board and student representative on the Inalco board of directors. This enabled me to put forward my candidacy for the position of student vice-president at CSIE.

My role is to support students and associations wishing to set up projects, to help them draw up their budgets for FSDIE applications, and to advise and guide them, in coordination with Inalco's departments. This role is very important to me, as it enables me to be in contact with all the associations and create a human link with their members. Generally speaking, I'd say that my greatest mission as student vice-president of the CSIE is to remain accessible and available to anyone wishing to get involved at Inalco.

You're also very involved in Inalco's associative life!

At the end of the 2016 academic year, I was lucky enough to be supported by my team and the student life department in creating the Saeho Paris association, of which I am still founding president. We wanted a dynamic association that promotes Korean culture through various scientific and cultural activities. Our most important day is the Journée de la Corée which is held every year at Inalco, among other cultural days.

We've also set up a mentoring program for first-year students and Korean exchange students to help them when they encounter administrative problems, for example. Above all, this program is an opportunity to strengthen ties between students; the Korean Studies Department is known for its spirit of understanding and solidarity between students, whatever their level of study. Through this program, we aim to strengthen these fraternal ties between all Inalco Korean students, but also to create a lasting bond between French and Korean students.

The association also works with a number of partners, including a travel agency offering special rates, a Korean karaoke bar in the 15th arrondissement, and a café-bar in the 5th arrondissement, where the afterworks of the sponsorship program are organized, etc.
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Projects?

I hope to continue developing the association with the new members of the team to propose new projects, precisely.
 

What is your initial training? What is your background prior to Inalco?

I trained as an Anglicist. After two years of post-bac literary preparatory classes, I went on to take the agrégation in English, then left for Canada. When I returned to France in the early 2000s, after spending ten years in Canada (first in Toronto, then in Montreal), I completed a thesis in sociolinguistics at the University of Louvain in Belgium. I was a PRAG at the IUFM in Lille, before taking up a position as a lecturer in English and Anglo-Saxon languages and literature (CNU Section 11) at the Université de Picardie in Amiens, a position that was later converted into a position in language sciences (CNU Section 7), with a focus on sociolinguistics and language didactics that suited me better.

In 2014, I took the competitive examination for university professors. At the end of these exams, I chose to come to Inalco rather than the University of Bordeaux, where I had also been admitted. At Inalco, I am a professor of what is generically known as language sciences, specializing in language didactics and sociolinguistics.


























What languages in particular do you study/speak?

Formally, I've studied several languages, which doesn't necessarily mean that I'm "fluent" in all of them: English, German, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, Breton, Mooré (the language of Burkina Faso) and, when I lived in Canada, a North American Indian language of the Algonquin group, Ojibwe. Since I've been at Inalco, I've been interested in the Malay world (Singapore, Malaysia), and I try, when I have the time, to continue learning Indonesian-Malay(ien), by taking courses at Inalco and above all by working on my own. The languages I speak with varying degrees of fluency are, apart from French, English, German and Portuguese.

How did your arrival at Inalco go?

It was pretty sporty! In Amiens, I had no particular administrative role, and when I arrived at Inalco, I had to take charge of the FLE department, which we quickly renamed the Didactics of Languages (DDL) department to cover the wider interests of our educational community in the teaching-learning of languages other than French. I also had to put together the syllabus for the "Didactique des langues et du FLE" professionalization course in the LLCER bachelor's degree, and set up the DDL master's degree, which we co-accredit with our partners at Paris 5-Descartes and Paris 3-Sorbonne Nouvelle. It's all been a lot of work, but I think it's fair to say that the results are quite positive, and much appreciated by students.

What are your areas of research? What is the focus of your research work?

Before coming to Inalco, I wasn't working particularly on oriental areas. With a more disciplinary background, I had done fieldwork in Canada in the minority Francophone world, in Belgium with migrant families and in Picardie, a French region where the regional language, Picard, is in a situation of invisible undermining compared to the national language, French. I have also investigated the place of language activities in the French education system. My interests, beyond geographical or cultural areas, focus on questions surrounding the place of languages in national, community and identity constructions. One of my fields of study is language learning and the place of plurilingualism in the functioning of multicultural societies.

Currently and since 2015, my research field is mainly located in Singapore, where I have spent several periods of time on the occasion of two research projects co-funded by USPC and the National University of Singapore. I'm interested in how this young republic built itself 52 years ago and reinvents itself today through the management of its cultural and linguistic diversity. This South-East Asian terrain is absolutely fascinating for a sociolinguist, and also poses many didactic questions.

You've just been appointed vice-president in charge of training and student life, what does this mission entail? What are your plans for the future?

This appointment comes at a particular time, that of the establishment's new training project for the coming years. My role, and that of the teams working with me, is to ensure the day-to-day running of the training courses and student life. This is the operational side: calendar, exams, admissions, diplomas, student initiatives, etc. I also chair the Conseil des formations et de la vie étudiante, which is one of our school's central councils. Part of the work ahead is also to reflect on and make proposals for the renewal of our range of courses, from bachelor's degrees to doctoral studies, masters degrees and institutional diplomas. To do this, we need to ensure that our training courses are pedagogically coherent and, where necessary, adapted to the constraints imposed on us by the Ministry.
We also need to ensure that our training courses are in line with the needs of our customers.

What was your initial training, your background before Inalco?

I trained in economics and management at ENS de Cachan, followed by a preparatory research course at Science po Paris (at the time - the early 1990s - it was the DEA "Études soviétiques et est européennes" directed by Hélène Carrère d'Encausse) and at Université Paris-X Nanterre (DEA "Économie des Institutions", directed by Olivier Favereau). I defended my thesis in 2000 at the University of Nanterre on the opening up of the Russian economy during the transition. With an agrégation in economics and management, I first worked at the IUT Jean Moulin at the University of Lyon. I was then recruited by Inalco in 2011, for a position entitled "Économie des États post-soviétiques".

How did your discovery of the Russian language and culture go?

It's an old story, but I have no family ties in the Russian-speaking world. I began by studying Russian in secondary school, in Marseille, where I benefited from very good teachers, such as M. Barlesi or Mme Nina Kéhayan (co-author, with her husband Jean Kéhayan, of the famous book entitled Rue du prolétaire rouge). My first trip to Russia was during this period: the Iron Curtain had not yet fallen and the Soviet Union had not yet seen Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms.

I had to put the study of Russian on hold during my years of preparatory classes, but I was able to return to it at the ENS and Sciences po. The rest is a matter of historical coincidence: at a time when I was wondering about the prospects for research in economics, the USSR was imploding. I had before me the most incredible field of study that an economist interested in the roles of institutions could imagine: the accelerated transformation of all modes of economic coordination in an immense area, with far-reaching social, economic and political consequences. I chose my DEA teacher, Jacques Sapir, as my thesis supervisor and embarked on the study of the Russian economy. It's been with me ever since.

Your arrival at Inalco as a teacher took place in what year? What has been your career path since then?

I joined Inalco in September 2011. I teach in several departments and disciplines: the "Métiers de l'international" department, which includes the "International Trade" and "International Relations" streams, and the "Russian Studies" department. Here, I teach general economics (e.g. business organization and strategy, or international financial macroeconomics) and economics applied to post-Soviet states ("Economics of Russia" in the third year of undergraduate studies in the Russia department, "Russia's Integration into the World Economy" for masters courses, "Economics of the Russia-Commonwealth of Independent States-Central and Eastern European Countries zone", etc.).
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For the "research" dimension of my activity, I joined the Centre de Recherches Europes Eurasie at Inalco, which is multidisciplinary. This means I can carry out projects in cooperation with my historian, geographer and political scientist colleagues, for example. Since my arrival at Inalco, I've taken a habilitation to direct research in economics and opened a professional degree in the International Trade program focusing on emerging countries, before being appointed director of the program in 2015.
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What are your areas of research? What is the focus of your research work?

To sum up, my research aims to combine a theoretical approach inspired by the institutionalist current in economics (including regulation theory, convention economics and evolutionary approaches, for example) and the study of the transformations undergone by the economies of the post-Soviet space, in particular Russia.

Over time, this approach has included comparative analysis of macro-economic trajectories, particularly in what have been referred to in recent years as the "emerging countries", at the forefront of which are the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, China). Of course, it's out of the question to claim to be a specialist in such a wide variety of economies and institutional configurations, but the approaches I use provide interesting tools for comparing the macro-economic and social trajectories of countries with significant structural differences. For this reason, my base camp remains Russia, but I don't rule out taking a look at what's going on elsewhere and drawing from it the lessons that can feed my analysis...
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Lately, the upheavals in the Russian economy and the tensions in its international integration (illustrated by sanctions and counter-sanctions) have led me to focus my analyses on its economic situation. But it is precisely what institutionalist analyses show that it is important to distinguish, in a given trajectory, between what is short-term and what stems from the fundamental structures of the economy. Ultimately, it is this distinction that my research most often focuses on.

As director of the International Trade program and the "emerging markets" pro degree program, what are your missions and projects?

The International Trade stream has one vocation: to equip students with the skills that will enable them to successfully integrate into the professional world, particularly in internationally-focused companies. In this context, my role is to lead the development of the program, in consultation with all the Inalco contacts and players with whom we work. We ensure the coherence of the diplomas we offer, as well as the updating of teaching models, in line with what we perceive to be the needs of our students and what is required by the professional environment that awaits them when they leave Inalco.
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That's why we insist on the link with the outside world: the program offers 2 levels of work-study training (master pro and licence pro) and all the other years of training we offer are accompanied by an internship period in an outside organization. The idea is that we can't pretend to train our students exhaustively through courses and seminars. They need to be able to learn for themselves, and to do so by increasing their contact with professional practices. Hence, too, the organization of testimonial conferences, collaboration with the Conseillers du Commerce Extérieurs de la France, the introduction of business simulations and games, etc.
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But students also need to be able to step back from these experiences, analyze them methodically and compare them with their own desires. Only then will they be able to build genuine personal strategies for their future careers. So they need to acquire knowledge of the economic environment in which companies operate, the techniques they use internationally, etc.
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Our main projects concern the development of work-study programs and relations with the professional world. Internship and work-study companies' assessments of our students are extremely positive. The feedback from our former graduates on our training program is equally positive. However, in my opinion, Inalco's International Business program is still not well known by companies, and we need to work hard on raising our profile, so that we are better appreciated by the milieu to which we send our graduates.
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What was your background before Inalco?

After the baccalaureate, I absolutely wanted to do Arabic. My paternal grandfather had lived in Morocco. He talked to me about North Africa all my childhood. So I enrolled at Langues O' to study Arabic 
. I didn't know what I was going to do. I was a dreamer... I only did what I liked, and the professional trends of the time related to the Arab world (oil industry, commerce, etc.) didn't interest me at all.
I started by studying the Arabic language. I began by studying Arabic, and also a little Swahili, then I prepared for a CPEI diploma (Centre de Préparation aux Echanges Internationaux) at Inalco. I did well on this diploma, but it bored me to death, as I'm not cut out for business. I completed my studies with a DEA in Islamology in the Comoros, which was much more intellectually interesting.
Between 1979 and 1984, during my studies, I traveled extensively in the Arab world: Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen... On one of my trips, I stopped over in Addis Ababa. I was fascinated by the Ethiopian capital and would have liked to have discovered more about the country and its culture.
I decided to prepare for the CECA. I decided to take the CPEI after a work experience in Algeria, where I hoped to return after graduation. I had been hired by Thomson, a major French industrial company, as a salesman through Inalco. I traveled all over the country and found it truly beautiful, a bit like a France du Midi that had remained frozen in the past and untouched by the pollution of mass tourism.
I didn't stay in North Africa for very long. I only stayed in North Africa for a few months, and I regretted it, because apart from my time in Algeria, I can describe my professional experience in the industrial world as the most miserable period of my life! It didn't suit my interests at all, either in terms of the industry or in human terms. I didn't at all like the rather contemptuous way in which many sales executives of the time looked at women and non-European peoples.

At Inalco, what position do you hold? What are your missions?

I started working at Inalco in 1989. I spent a year working on pedagogical registrations for the South Asia, Southeast Asia department. After that, I worked as an attaché de direction in the CPEI department until 2014. In addition to managing student administration, I was also responsible for organizing events and conferences specifically for the students in this program.
In 2014, I joined the Service d'information, d'orientation et d'insertion professionnelle (Sio-ip), the department of Catherine Mathieu, with whom I had already worked at CPEI 22 years earlier. My current job involves two main tasks: managing internship agreements and distributing internship and job offers to students and recent graduates. I've set up a database that enables me to follow up every year with students interested in this service. I also track internships to establish statistics and provide real administrative assistance to students. For me, Inalco is very interesting and I'm happy here: it's a very original public, with varied profiles, which means that every year is different. It's an environment rich in encounters, very open to the world and to others. There's a generally friendly atmosphere among the students and teachers.

So you have a particular attraction to the Arabic language and culture

The Arab world has always been of great interest to me. I'm particularly passionate about the Arabic language and civilization. This language has a well-structured, very logical, mathematical grammar. And I'm mad about mathematics. One of my high school teachers was Algerian, and he instilled in us a taste for mathematics and logic. I admire what Muslim civilization has brought to the world of science, what it has been able to synthesize from India and Greece in the field of mathematics. I regret that there is no course at Inalco on the Arab world and its contribution to the so-called hard sciences: mathematics, physics, chemistry, to which we could also add optics, medicine and astronomy...
. In parallel with my professional activity at Inalco, I have, in a way, pursued my research and studies as a member of the Association des anciens élèves et amis des langues orientales. Over the past 20 years, I've written almost fifty articles on borrowings from French to Arabic in the Revue Orients (back then it was called Bulletin des anciens élèves de l'Inalco). I also had fun writing tales, to give you an example, Le Satrape et la Persane, published in February 2013. In 2012, following a bout with cancer from which I recovered a year later, I resumed evening classes in Arabic and at the same time, thanks to a fascinating second-year undergraduate course at Inalco, I discovered Islamic art. The latter, imbued with geometry, is bound to appeal to a mathematics enthusiast like me. My interest then turned to the architecture of monuments like the Dome of Soltaniyeh in Iran. I rediscover this affinity with Arab civilization with Russian music, which I appreciate a lot (opera, classical...) with its oriental sounds, and above all with the Iberian peninsula, with which I have a family link. I've been traveling there for many years, creating "travel diaries" of historic monuments 
. Today, Inalco's range of training courses has expanded, and if I had to do it all over again professionally, instead of the CPEI, I would have prepared a diploma in French as a Foreign Language to teach French, of course! Alas, I'm not at all good at languages, my mother was American and I speak English very badly; my wife is Portuguese and I also speak Portuguese very badly!

Outside of Inalco, do you have any other interests?

Since 2013, after my operation, I have joined a kidney cancer patient association. As part of this, I regularly contribute to a press review. I also attend the annual conference of a urologist specializing in cancer, for which I write a summary that I circulate to members of the association. I take advantage of this press review to present a scientific or artistic personality who has died of cancer, such as Maryam Mirzakhani, an Iranian mathematician who died this summer, or Sophie Germain, a 19th-century French mathematician. I have also published issues devoted to Israeli actress Ronit Elkabetz and writer Boris Pasternak.
 

What was your initial training, before Inalco?

My initial training was in history (at Paris IV) and I didn't come to Indonesia, Indonesian and Inalco until a little later, when I was almost at the end of that training. My training in the field covered by my thesis (sociolinguistics and terminology) came much later.

Your discovery of Indonesian language and culture?

I discovered Indonesia quite early, at the age of 14, through a troupe of musicians and dancers from Bali that I had the opportunity to accompany for a few days on tour in Paris and Italy. These encounters were repeated several times, as these artists toured, and for a long time I only got to know these people in France, because in those days people traveled a lot less than they do today. In fact, I went to Indonesia for the first time when I was only 22, and lived there between 1986 and 1991. But to come back to the people through whom I came to know this country, today, forty years later, I'm still in very frequent contact with them. We've grown old together.

How did you get to Inalco? What is your background at Inalco?

I was recruited as a lecturer in 1995, then as a senior lecturer in 2002 and finally as a professor in 2016. Indonesian-Malaysian is not a large section, so I took over all the responsibilities bequeathed to me by my predecessor, as is often the case: management of the section, baccalaureate exams (now run by my colleague Etienne Naveau) and competitive exams, etc. It wasn't long before I was asked to head up the South-East Asia, Upper Asia and Pacific department, and a little later to take charge of bachelor's degrees, in the delicate context of the transition to the LMD. This kept me busy until 2010, I believe. At the same time, I began to sit on various boards 
. 
What are your areas of research? What is the focus of your research work?

My research has always been multidisciplinary, which isn't always easy to manage. For several years now, it has been in three fields: sociolinguistics (with an increasingly tenuous link to my doctoral research), Indonesian didactics (development of tools such as textbooks and grammar) and a third, unrelated field, revolving around popular iconography in Java in the 19th and 20th centuries. My most recent project concerns intercomprehension between Indonesian and Malay, two closely related variants of Malay which are also the national languages of Indonesia (one) and Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei Darussalam (the other). 
You are the author of an Indonesian textbook (L'Asiathèque), how did you conceive it?

I would say that my co-author (Saraswati Wardhany) and I first designed it to meet the needs of students and colleagues in the Indonesian-Malaysian section! Then came other didactic, linguistic and practical considerations. Among the most delicate issues were the choice of the standard to be taught and the use of ad hoc linguistic tools, with regard not only to the language but also to the needs and knowledge of the students. We have also endeavoured to produce a lively, colourful and user-friendly book.

Today, you have been appointed Vice President in charge of organization and resources, what does this entail?

The official title mentions "organization and resources" or "general affairs", which suggests quite broad ramifications. It's about assisting the President and also, in part, flushing out blind spots, i.e. dealing with problems big or small that no other management position covers. I'll have a better answer to that question in a few weeks' time.
 

What did you do before Inalco? How did you get to Inalco?

Guy : My pre-Inalco period?...Well, I worked in construction as an electrician, and then later in a galvano plastie factory where I made beautiful Moroccan teapots, here... back then I already had...

Paul : ...You already had an oriental streak...

Guy : ...And as fate would have it, I met the head of Inalco's audiovisual service (SAV), Mr. Édouard Cléret, who suggested I come and work with him. So I arrived in 1973. At the very beginning, the SAV had been created solely for the Japan department.

Paul: In 1968, moreover, at the instigation of Mr. Fujimori

Guy: Right, and it was Édouard who made it a common service for all Inalco languages. He set up audiovisual service branches in all the other centers so that all languages could benefit from recording, editing and broadcasting services. Video did not yet exist 
. 
What exactly were you producing?

Guy: We can't say that they were already language methods, we were more on sound recordings adapted to the pedagogy of the time. Every year, it was re-recorded.

And you, Paul, don't you want to tell us more?

Paul: I didn't train or study audiovisual. However, I started working in connection with film at the SFRS (scientific research film service). They produced 16mm films for universities, in much the same way as the CNDP had an audiovisual collection for secondary schools. I was a film verifier, which meant I worked on rewinders, wearing gloves. I made sure that the films went out in good condition and came back in good condition. Damaged portions had to be cut out, and perforations had to be redone. That was my first contact with audiovisual material.
Later, the director of the SFRS took me on board the project for the Musée de la Villette: for a year and a half, I was attached to her video unit. At the same time, I started working as a stage manager on the very first Omnimax film project for the Géode, Pierre Willemin's L'Eau et les hommes.
The French didn't yet know much about video. The French weren't too familiar with this technology yet: it was 70mm film that had to be reduced to 35mm so that the directors could view what they'd shot. I would recover all the 35mm scraps from the editing tapes I discovered, to make series and reattach all the rushes that had been made. In Omnimax, we were on a 160-degree screen, horizontal and vertical. These rushes had to be projected onto a mini geode, a hemispherical screen. I would set up incredible slide shows on several projectors at the same time. That audiovisual fireworks display at La Villette is what motivated me to continue in this field...
. 
Guy: And then, at some point you enrolled at Inalco... to do Hindi!!

Paul : I was also doing a lot of traveling, to India among other places, and I wanted to learn the language. I enrolled at Inalco while simultaneously working at La Villette... Yet full of good will, the first evening I wanted to go and work in the lab, well there was Guy sipping tea, settled on a sofa watching a Satyajit Ray Bengali film, Pather Panchali. You get the picture (laughs). And, instead of directing me to the laboratory to work like any studious student, he moved me to the other side of the counter, settled me on the sofa, served me tea and forced me to watch the Satyajit Ray film! So my Hindi remained a bit on the fritz (laughs). I did two years. Then I was asked to replace someone in the laboratory as a temporary teaching assistant for South Asia. Then I became a contract teacher, replacing someone who was in post, and I passed a competitive examination.

You have a long experience of your constantly evolving profession, how has it developed at Inalco?

Guy: In the early days, we worked mainly with sound and slides; video didn't exist. Then one day a big, very standard VCR arrived that weighed 40 kg. It enabled us to play the first U-matic cassettes from Japan. That's how video came about. We had some advanced training, but above all we were very curious. We read all the instruction manuals. Then we got a tape camcorder for the first shoots. Then came a player-recorder. From there, video evolved. We've been lucky enough to be very reactive: it's become very interesting. We had the first black-and-white control rooms, so we could film live lessons and then edit them live. The teacher would pick it up and distribute it to the students. It was an exciting thing to do 
. We would go out and film shows with equipment that wasn't portable. I remember going out all night with other colleagues, two cars full of equipment. We'd come back at dawn and set up. It was a pretty funny time.
The rooms were equipped with video projectors so we could show all our productions: both original documents brought back from China, Japan or elsewhere by the teachers, and documents we had edited with them and the students.

And then came the digital revolution...

Guy: Before, when a teacher wanted to modify a 5-second sequence, there were only two solutions: nibble 5 seconds off the next sequence or redo the whole edit. The arrival of digital technology has changed all that: you can do whatever you want.

Paul: The analog process is copying: the rushes are on a support and, to edit them, we copy bits one after the other. It's one generation, then another, and each time you lose quality. With digital editing, there's no loss of quality.

Guy: Both for video and sound. With digital, we quickly realized the potential and the time savings. We started producing more films.

You've also done some filming.

Guy: After that turn we really started "producing". We'd go off with teachers who had projects. We did Rémy Dor's shoots with small Qazaq, Chaldean and Sufi communities. We also did a few shoots abroad. It was extraordinary. The first editing I did was in Super 8 in Indonesia in 1982-1983; Jacques Pimpaneau's films, Le théâtre d'ombres à Bali et Java or Danses pour les Dieux; Jean Kudela's Les Sorabes; Nunavut with Michelle Therrien's Printemps Inuit au Nunavut.
. 
Were you drawn to a particular culture or language?

Guy: When I went to Indonesia... I did Indonesian. For Tanzania, I did a little Swahili. I didn't do Inuktitut it was too complicated... neither was Sorbian. It's hard to take classes and work.

Paul: Until the move to the Pôle des langues et civilisations, I was attached to South Asia. I didn't keep in touch with the language, but my interest in Indian culture never disappeared. With all the languages coming together, we've had to touch on everything. It's a different, broader, more open kind of pleasure.

The PLC's equipment has inevitably had an impact on your activities?

Guy: In some centers, conditions were appalling. So having our own premises equipped for teaching needs; new or very good condition equipment so that students could work and get together with all the teachers from all the departments was a great emulation that gave us an extraordinary boost!

Paul: An important point for us was the auditorium. We were filming shows at the Maison des cultures du monde, and we planned to have a space for that kind of activity here. Unfortunately, in the end, our auditorium was designed more as a conference room and less as a performance space.

Guy: Our business has evolved so much that we wouldn't even have had the time. We've been asked more and more to do sound and image editing for teaching purposes. Our activity is now more educational than cultural. It's been a great time, but that's not the primary aim at Inalco either.

Paul: We also have the good fortune, the opportunity, to have a sound recording studio and another specific one for video. All this took on its full dimension with the Czech Mooc made with puppets.

A second driving force is the arrival of your department manager Pierre-Jean Vigny

Paul: To sum up, since we've been here (at PLC) the evolution has been with Pierre-Jean's arrival. He's taken us on a real leap forward in terms of digitalization, realization and reorganization of the department. Today, pedagogical engineering has joined us, with a team of 3 pedagogical engineers monitoring the Moodle platform. Three Moocs have been created: Arabic, Czech and Chinese. We've wiped the first rough patches and, little by little, the engineers will be more and more operational. I only participate insofar as my field is concerned, but videos are just the tip of the Mooc iceberg, so to speak. I'm currently helping teachers produce their videos. There can also be video productions with Moodle.

We haven't yet touched on film festivals...

Paul: Our colleagues at the time, Gaël Brunet and Didier Autin, were the initiators of an African cinema video ciné-club which, before it came to an end, led to teaching African cinema and to Inalco's participation in Fespaco (Ouagadougou Pan-African Film and Television Festival), with an Inalco prize. And I took the initiative of setting up this ciné-club with our Asia fund. Then a teacher, Marie-Caroline Saglio-Yatzimirsky, suggested we meet a famous Indian actress at the Deauville Asian Film Festival. It was dedicated to China, Korea, Japan and South Asia. After this little detour, we landed on the Vesoul Festival project, which covered a much wider geographical area and was much more interesting for us. We've been taking part since 2002, winning our first Inalco cash prize in 2004. The festival has grown in scope, with the creation of an Inalco jury and the organization of a delegation of students and teachers selected according to the festival program. They meet directors, actors and producers. Interviews are filmed, then edited, translated and subtitled. The project gets better every time. A word of warning to teachers: many interviews have not yet been translated. The ultimate aim is to make them available so that teachers can put students in a position to exchange in the language, translate and adapt for subtitling. From a pedagogical point of view, it's an extremely interesting project, because it's complete. 

Are the films and reports you've made also accessible?

Paul : yes, as podcasts, digitized. Digitizing these productions, after selecting them, was a very time-consuming part of our work.

An outstanding experience abroad? A memory to share with us?

Guy: In Nunavut, we went by sled, we were in a trailer pulled by a skidoo (snowmobile) with all the equipment in it. We were on our way to the shooting location. The temperature was in the -30s. At one point, we left the road to go onto a frozen lake, and our trailer completely flipped over. We slid for 20, 30 meters, the camera on one side, the two guys on the other, fortunately without damage.

 

A path open to languages and cultures


Let's start at the beginning, what was your initial training, your background before Inalco? 

It was my passion for languages and cultures that mapped out my path. Before coming to Paris, I learned French up to degree level at Kabul University. In 2011, I studied management, translation and communication after passing the ISIT (Institut de management et de communication interculturels) entrance exam. These three years of study and my interest in interculturality led me to Inalco. I chose to study for a master's degree in Communication, Information and New Media, as well as a master's degree in Intercultural Communication and Training.

As a student, did your path at Inalco diversify towards other languages?

First of all, I deepened my linguistic knowledge of Persian to a sustained level. Being a vocational student, I also focused more on communication and intercultural skills. I was hired immediately after completing an internship. The practical communication tools and techniques I learned during my 2 years at Inalco are very useful in my daily professional life: website, social networks, video editing... 

Tell us about your first steps and your professional evolution.

I applied for a six-month internship at Inalco to run the Alumni network. I took part in the creation and launch of the alumni network - a real opportunity! I was then hired as a communications officer, responsible for the Inalco Alumni network. I've been working in this position for three months now, bearing in mind that I only graduated at the beginning of 2017. 

Why choose Inalco?

Quite simply because I'm passionate about cultures and languages. When you're a student at Inalco, you understand it as a crossroads of Eastern languages and cultures. It's a unique place in the world. Besides, I'm always keen to learn and speak as many languages as possible, to get to know and understand the different cultures of the world, even if it's hard to do... But I have a particular liking for Hindi, with (too) many hours of watching Indian films and series. I hope to learn it very soon. 

When you were studying, what were your areas of research?

In my dissertation, I studied the intercultural problems and conflicts that arose during the 14-year presence of foreign forces in Afghanistan. Misunderstanding and lack of knowledge of the culture contributed greatly in the loss of foreign soldiers and civilians. Dozens of foreign soldiers have been shot dead by their Afghan colleagues as a result of cultural conflicts. Several wedding ceremonies have been bombed... Thus, this situation of misunderstanding has generated discontent among Afghans and hatred against NATO forces in Afghanistan. It just goes to show that a certain cultural knowledge is essential, especially when it comes to military intervention. 

What are your plans for the future of our company?

These days, the notion of a "network" is very important in the professional world. It's an asset for students and alumni, who can exchange advice, good tips and job offers, but we're also working on Inalco's international influence. I want to give my all to ensure that the Inalco Alumni network is truly dynamic and effective. 

Any activities outside Inalco?

I'm a volunteer translator-interpreter with France Terre d'Asile, like many Inalco students. I think my skills in Persian and French can be useful in welcoming and understanding migrants' situations. So why not put them to good use for people in need? 

 

Laura Lacour, cultural action manager 


What was your initial career path?

My path has been marked out between two tendencies, the emotional and artistic and a more rational part. My studies oscillated between the arts (baccalauréat lettres arts) and law until a specialization in international public law, which opened me up to international institutions, NGOs, their governance, etc. to return "behind the scenes" with a master's degree in cultural project management, specializing in cultural industries, cinema and audiovisual.

At the end of this course, I realized how to link my various aspirations: bridging the gap between culture and international law, diplomacy and soft power by joining France's foreign cultural network. I wanted to do an end-of-studies internship abroad, in an Alliance française. My dissertation was on the distribution of Indian cinema in France, so I applied for a six-month internship in Delhi, India, in 2011. 

So this was the end of your initial training, but also the start of your professional integration?

I had an opportunity for a second six-month internship, in the media this time, as a production manager in a major press group, for the web. I produced live music videos, interviews with actors, directors and so on. I was able to go to Cannes for the Festival, a real professional opportunity.

But I really wanted to go abroad again, with an international volunteer contract as a cultural attaché. With a winning ticket, I went to Sri Lanka for two years (between 2013 and 2015). My first real job.

It was there that I first heard about Inalco and realized the links with my activities.


An attraction to other languages and cultures? 


Initially, not necessarily for languages, but for other cultures, yes!!! That's what characterizes the missions of France's foreign cultural network. Showcasing French culture, of course, but not only that. My job was to create synergies between artists who were never meant to meet. Bringing French musicians, dancers and street artists to Sri Lanka and generating collaborations with their Sri Lankan counterparts.

What I'm now doing at Inalco in the other direction: introducing world cultures to a French audience. And, at the same time, learning a language (Hindi) at Inalco in evening classes. 

How did you find your way to Inalco?

Quite simply, I was offered the job. It was a no-brainer for me and I'm delighted to be here! My wish is for Inalco to become a place that sets the standard for cultural expression. 
So you've turned your passions into a profession?

Yes, at Inalco, with the annual program and, this month, the Festival of Civilizations, which opens its second edition. Initiating the project, stimulating contributions from teaching colleagues, students via associations or the visit of artists linked to our areas of interest, already means a few months spent receiving and understanding projects. This takes place in June and July of the previous year. Attempting partnerships from the start of the school year in September and finalizing the program, with quality as the top priority! Then we manage all the operational, legal, financial and communication aspects of the project, as well as the logistical and technical aspects in the days leading up to the shows. 

My initial training and experience have been a real support in the conception and realization of my cultural mediation activity. Hence my pleasure at working at Inalco!

What is your initial training?

After graduating from high school, I began studying sociology. My favorite topic was the sociology of deviance, and my master's thesis was on prison leavers. I was particularly interested in the reintegration of these people after a different or complicated "time", also through integration gardens.

A foreign experience?

Then I went to Dublin in Ireland with the Erasmus program to discover another culture. Being far from one's habits and family challenges one's ideas, prejudices and convictions, and opens up new perspectives.

Why Ireland?

I have Irish roots through my mother's family dating back to the great famine of the mid-19^th century. My ancestors then settled in Brittany. I wanted to go to an English-speaking country and chose Dublin. I discovered a magnificent country and freedom.

What were your first professional steps before Inalco?

A great lover of music, especially on stage, live, I set up my own music booking and promotion structure in 2009. Until 2014, I managed a catalog of musical artists with whom I worked, and organized concerts and tours. This interest in music, artist promotion and marketing was a very formative first experience. I developed my team management skills - I was able to take on up to four people - and my communication skills. This structure still exists, but is less active. At the same time, in 2013, with a friend, I set up another structure specializing in social networking training. So I was wearing two hats, and my experience in communications and training was enriched. Today, I pursue this activity on an occasional basis.

Then, you arrive at Inalco...

I knew Inalco by reputation, and my choice to come and work here was no accident. In a context of globalization, Inalco particularly appealed to me because it represents a real place of openness to the world and exchange between cultures.

You joined the continuing education department in 2014, what is your role?

I'm coordinator for Persian, Russian and Hebrew. Since my arrival, we've been able to open up new languages, including Swahili, Ukrainian and Finnish, which I also look after.

I work with the department manager, Anne Duponchelle. My main tasks are organizing training courses, communication, and also prospecting. My aim is to reach out to new audiences who don't necessarily have access to this information. Our latest campaign was advertised in the newspaper 20 minutes.
. 
Inalco's continuing education department is a professional training organization that offers the public a wide range of language and civilization training schemes: individual training, intensive courses, evening classes, customized training. We respond to current demand. We also offer training in new languages and new themes. So it's very varied. The offer for civilizations is proposed in the form of cultural conferences, seminars. We respond to demand from the public but also from teachers. The Living and working seminar is designed for people wishing to learn basic cultural codes before moving to or traveling in a country. Each country has its own set of issues. The teachers at Inalco bring us their expertise, their local knowledge and their address books. Françoise Robin, a specialist in Tibet, has developed an offer in Intercultural Mediation on the theme Refugees in France within the continuing education department, which is very responsive. These training courses have been designed for institutions or associations receiving refugees.

We provide employees with information on specific funding possibilities and existing diplomas for returning to school, financed by employers or Pôle emploi, as well as on schemes such as VAE (Validation d'acquis d'expérience) and alternance training. We also provide support and advice to companies in the private sector and public bodies. FC also organizes the CPLCO (Certificat Pratique de Langue et Culture Orientales) in Arabic, Chinese and Japanese and language tests in Chinese (HSK) and Japanese (JPLT).

What do you like most about this job?

I love dealing with the public, whether on the phone or face-to-face. For teachers, it's very interesting to have to deal with their analysis of the field and their extensive theoretical knowledge. I try to meet teachers whenever I can, whether they're in initial training or continuing education.

A particular attraction for one or more of Inalco's languages?

The choice is so vast and... everything interests me... I'm also a great lover of cinema and it's much more through this medium that I go to meet cultures. I regularly visit the médiathèque de l'Inalco, which has a very interesting collection. I borrow films of all kinds there: Afghan, Iranian, Chinese, Japanese... my attraction to cuisine, which is another way of discovering a culture, sometimes inspires my choices for certain films like Ang Lee's Salé Sucré or Naomi Kawase's Les délices de Tokyo.

Because of my family history, I have more affinity with the Near East and Asia, these parts of the world: my grandfather was born in Turkey and my father cooks a lot of oriental dishes: vine leaves, hummus, eggplant caviar... My parents met in Nepal and my father is a Tibetan Buddhist, I myself have visited Indonesia. This year, my partner is learning Japanese as part of his continuing education program.

Do you have a specific hobby, for example, do you play a musical instrument?

No, but I'm passionate about music, and recently I've rediscovered vinyl. For example, this summer in Portugal, I found a vinyl record - absolutely not of Fado - but of Jimmy Cliff, extraordinary!

Any links with colleagues?

At FC, there are seven of us and we get on very well. I've also forged a bond with the ICTE team on the 7^th floor since I'm often at the mediatheque! Since then, we regularly have lunch together. We're from different generations, which is great, and above all we don't talk about work! We get to know each other in a different way, and it's very pleasant.

A Alain Hayot portrait. Inalco.

Have you always worked in the IT field? 

I trained as an electronics technician. I then trained as an analyst-programmer and worked in various fields. From 1989 to 1997, I worked at the Paris Observatory. In 1997, I passed a competitive examination to join the Université de la Réunion as an assistant engineer, assisting the research engineer in charge of networks and systems. In 1999, I passed another competitive entrance examination to join the Crous d'Orléans-Tours as head of the IT department. In June 2006, I applied for a transfer to Inalco as a network and systems engineer. At that time, Christiane Berry was in charge of the IT department. I was in charge of all network maintenance as well as certain contracts (e-mail, website...) before Samia Taghelit came to consolidate the IT department. At the time, Inalco had 7 sites and I was in charge of their maintenance and upgrades. I also worked on the study for the construction of the new building (Grands Moulins site), in collaboration with the Île-de-France region, BULAC, the vice-president of Inalco and Samia Taghelit, who is now in charge of the MMSI department. From 2009 to 2011, I worked with Samia Taghelit on Inalco's networks, and then I had to take on this responsibility on my own, as Samia Taghelit took over responsibility for the entire IT department following Christiane Berry's retirement. Since then, I've been solely responsible for the school's network infrastructure. 
What is a computer network? 

As soon as you want to access an application, a file or a piece of information outside your computer, you go through the network, via cables, switches, routers and other types of hardware and software. It's a kind of route that you have to take to get from point A to point B in computing. When one of these components doesn't work, users are stuck, because today most applications are located on remote servers (computers): Apogée (Application pour l'organisation et la gestion des enseignements et des étudiants), Harpège (human resources management tool for higher education), Sifac (Système d'Information Financier Analytique et Comptable)... If the network doesn't work, the school doesn't work. And no-one can access IT resources outside their own workstation.

Hence the importance of your job. What are your missions? 

I'm in charge of building work and technical premises related to IT, cabling, telephony, wi-fi, network security, maintenance, internet and intranet links. I'm the network referent for Renater (Réseau National de télécommunications pour la Technologie l'Enseignement et la Recherche) and other establishments (public or not). Whenever an institution wants to access Inalco resources, it does so via the network. 
The difficulties of the job? 

I'm faced with over a hundred network components (routers, switches), with more than 150 telephone sets, 75 wi-fi terminals, plus a dozen applications for monitoring, managing and supervising the computer network. Up until now, I was the only person who could intervene in the event of a breakdown or intervention on the network. Jérôme Becot (design engineer), has just been assigned to the network and systems department to help me (normally 50% of his time) and my colleague Valerian Millet to continue maintaining and upgrading Inalco's network and systems. In addition to the actual maintenance and upgrading of the network, I'm in charge of updating network equipment. Because without updates, there's a risk that applications won't work, or that there will be security flaws, and therefore risks of hacking. The hardest part: The heavy workload, the time spent reading and replying to emails, the daily requests for assistance between the System Department and users, finding the time to keep your knowledge up to date, the arrival of new products that replace the old ones and require attention and often a reorganization of the current operating mode. Studying a new network and systems architecture, which requires major changes in colleagues and the business. This job involves constantly questioning hardware, software and the way colleagues and/or users operate. At the moment, Samia and I are working on updating the Rue de Lille site: redoing the cabling, reviewing the installations. It's all a lot of work 
. 
The challenges? 

It's a job where you have to keep up to date all the time, make frequent updates, rethink the way the network has been designed to optimize access and avoid latency. You're always questioning what's going on. At the speed at which IT is evolving, we can't just sit back and do nothing, otherwise we run the risk of falling behind the technology, and the risk to Inalco's security is too great. For the moment, I think Inalco is rather ahead of other establishments (in terms of networks and systems). We have containers, virtual routers, a way of managing network access and systems that allow us to optimize the operation of our IT resources. The majority of our servers are virtualized, and we have production servers to ensure that no new service poses a problem when it is finally installed. In addition, we have started to set up a supervision system that informs us as soon as there is a problem concerning the network or the system.

You've been at Inalco for 11 years, dealing with cabling, connections, access, you never stop creating links within the establishment. Is there one we don't know about? 

Since the start of the 2016 school year, I've been taking continuing education Korean courses with Mr. Heo.

And why Korean? 

Koreans are hard-working people. They're persevering, and their technological evolution has been as meteoric as Japan's. In a very short space of time, they've managed to put themselves on the cutting edge of IT, and that's a trait that appeals to me. I'd love to visit the country and learn more about their culture.

What was your initial training? Your background before Inalco?

I followed a conventional secondary school curriculum, then a BTS in computer graphics at ENSAIT Roubaix. I then went straight into working life:
- 1982-1988: Office assistant in various establishments such as Palais de la Découverte, CIO près le Tribunal pour enfants, Bibliothèque Lariboisière-Saint-Louis, LEP Curial, followed by a four-year leave of absence 
. - When I returned to work in 1992, I turned to higher education as an administrative officer at CNOUS, then at the Pierre et Marie Curie University and the University of Paris 10. 
I took the opportunity to train in Data Reliability in 2009.

Once you're a data processing specialist, what are your career choices?

I immediately put my training into practice by joining the University of Paris 6 in the HR Department - HRIS - Data Reliability on Harpège, then Paris 10 (Nanterre) again for data reliability but this time within the framework of university autonomy. I also had the opportunity to collaborate on the choice of data collection procedures for the nascent ENT at Paris 10. 
You pronounce a lot of acronyms (laughs). What do they stand for?
- HRD stands for Human Resources Department 
. - HRIS stands for human resources information systems. They facilitate human resources management by centralizing data.
- Harpège is a human resources management application for higher education 
. - An ENT is a digital workspace.


Next, you arrive at Inalco.

Yes, I've been transferred to Inalco to set up a system to ensure the reliability of administrative management data for permanent staff as part of the management of individual retirement accounts. This data feeds the statement of individual situation that each agent receives at home according to their year of birth.

What is your role within the department?

Still with Harpège, I work on data reliability:
- Participation in the Inalco staff data collection protocol 
. - Acting as an interface between Amue (the agency for the mutualization of universities and higher education establishments), the pensions department, and the management departments for the Individual Retirement Account (CIR).
Help and support for users. - Help and support for users.
- Participation in departmental surveys using Business Objects (data queries).
- Participation in the social balance sheet.

I'm attached to the steering assistance unit within the HRD. This unit is made up of three missions:
- payroll,
- payroll,
- Harpege functional assistance, CIR, responding to surveys, social balance sheet.

As you know, data has become an essential part of a company's information systems. As they become more voluminous, they must be of high quality and reliable.





 

Catherine Mathieu - head of Inalco's SIO-IP.

What was your initial training, your background before Inalco? 
After high school, I studied Chinese at Inalco and Spanish at Paris Sorbonne Nouvelle.
I was determined to study foreign languages. I was determined to study foreign languages. I found myself in my element right from the start of my studies.
I soon discovered that even more than learning a foreign language, it was history and literature that fascinated me.

So your presence at Inalco was a natural fit...
I studied Chinese there and only Chinese, right up to my master's degree, but I didn't think then that I'd be studying (even superficially) other languages.

Did you soon get the chance to go out into the field?
I went to China in September 1982, on a Ministry of Foreign Affairs scholarship. We took an oral exam and left for 2 years.
I was lucky enough to be sent to Beijing, where I stayed for three and a half years. I went to an institute called the Language Institute, I think, and then I went to Peking University. I have to admit that I was a very diligent student in France, but in China, I was more curious about working, traveling and trying to understand society...
I didn't study much in France, but I did learn a lot. I didn't study much, to tell the truth, but I did work there quickly... On Chinese television, then at Elf Aquitaine as a "liaison officer"; finally, in the nuclear department of the French embassy as an assistant during negotiations between Framatome and China for the construction of the 1st nuclear power plant at Daya Bay.

What did you do when you returned to France?
After 3 and a half years, I returned to Paris with a great eagerness to leave again, much to my parents' chagrin I think!
I was lucky enough to join the MAE as a contract employee and worked in Hanoi for 5 years! I discovered the Vietnamese language, life in a small embassy, working as a secretary in a cooperation department and Southeast Asia: all at roughly the same time! 
After 5 years, I had the opportunity to move to Hong Kong for a job that was too formal and not full enough for my taste. I soon got bored and resigned...
That was in 1991. So I stayed in the Far East for 10 years!

Then Inalco until today. I was lucky enough to hold a position that enabled me to develop a whole range of activities aimed at professionalizing student career paths, as well as acquiring skills in personnel and project management, organization and modernization of services.
It was a fascinating and exhausting experience. It was both exciting and exhausting! 
Did you have the opportunity to develop any research activities?
No, unfortunately I don't have the academic streak... but I do admire it in academics!

What is your role within the SIO-IP. Why this student service? How is it organized? What are the advantages, what are the difficulties?
For me, the SIO-IP is like the culmination of work I started quite a while ago now at the CPEI and which I was able to develop thanks to the director at the time, François Godement. He was interested in the problems of finding professional outlets, as we used to say 
. From now on, my role is that of an "agitator", a "coach" to help students move forward and... leave Inalco with a job they have chosen and obtained thanks to their training at our institute!
.

Françoise Robin and the Dalai Lama's visit to Inalco
 

What was your initial training?
After business studies that didn't suit me, I travelled and took sociology-anthropology courses at Paris 8. During a trip to Nepal, I discovered the Himalayas and the Tibetan language and civilization, and on my return I enrolled in Tibetan at Langues O', an old dream come true.

As a student, did your path at Inalco diversify towards other languages?
After my Tibetan course, I took evening classes in Chinese for two years. Many other languages tempt me at Inalco (almost all...), but where would I find the time?

Did your first professional steps have anything to do with languages?
I started teaching at Langues O' as a lecturer when I was doing my thesis. Before that, I had done "odd jobs" in the cultural field (publishing houses, radio, cinema) in several countries.

Do you have an interest in other world languages and cultures, or other disciplines?
I've been fascinated by foreign countries since childhood. In 1994, I went from Paris to Lhasa by land (Trans-Siberian, Trans-Mongolian). I continue to travel as much as I can, and I love the very near as well as the very far.

Your experience in the field...
I've made a point of visiting Tibet as regularly as possible for the past twenty years, which enables me to observe social and literary developments in fine detail.

What are your areas of research?
I work mainly on contemporary culture: fictional literature, poetry and cinema. In a highly surveilled environment, these fields offer original access to a better understanding of the dynamics of contemporary society. Working with writers and filmmakers also brings great pleasure on a human level.

Your participation in the Dalai Lama's visit to Inalco. How did you make this possible?
With the Dalai Lama due to come to France in 2016, my proposal to invite him was accepted by the Presidency. The Tibet Office in Paris, representing the Tibetan government in exile, approved our invitation, as we were one of the first institutions in the Western world to offer Tibetan language teaching, back in 1842. On the Inalco side, everyone did their utmost to make the visit a success. The Chinese Embassy tried to dissuade us. I am proud that Inalco did not give in to this inappropriate and inadmissible blackmail.

Do you have any other activities related to the Tibetan world?
The students in the Tibet section and I are quite involved with Tibetan refugees. This takes us right to the heart of the problems faced by migrants (papers, housing, health, intercultural, etc.).

- Françoise Robin on France Inter on the occasion of the Dalai Lama's visit. 

- On francetvinfo.fr: Three questions to... Françoise Robin: "there's a kind of laughing despair in Tibet"

- Françoise Robin on inalco.fr 

 

Luc Deheuvels

Before Inalco, what languages did you learn or simply discover?

Professor of Arabic language and literature, I've been at Inalco since 1994. Before that, I taught Arabic in secondary schools after passing the agrégation, and then spent ten years at the Sorbonne (Paris 4) as an assistant and then maître de conférences. This is the result of a lifelong and tenacious passion for languages: English, Russian, Latin, Arabic from high school onwards, I had also started self-taught hieroglyphic Egyptian, which I continued to study later on; Italian followed, with a small opening towards Hebrew and Persian; a few snatches of Dutch from my ancestors, and desires for other languages: Vietnamese, Burmese, Portuguese... all this when a lifetime is not enough to learn Arabic!

Impressive! Another discipline to your credit?

I studied Arabic and history at the same time, and when I was studying at the French Institute in Damascus, I even did a master's degree on the history of Raqqa, a city that very few people knew about at the time! My master's thesis was translated into Arabic by the Syrian Ministry of Culture, edited by the same ministry, published... and immediately banned by Syrian censors!

Your interest turned to literature?

I specialize in modern Arabic literature, where my research is particularly oriented towards themes of literary myth and utopian writing, as well as questions of genericity and writing innovations; I'm especially interested in transformations in narrative writing from the end of the 19th century and the so-called Nahda (Arab Renaissance) to the present day, as well as in theater, and I direct doctoral student research in the same fields.

Your other activities are numerous. What are they?

Passing on the language at all levels is a passion for me: from beginners to doctorates, via CAPES and agrégation juries. After six years as head of the studies committee and vice-president of the school, I accepted a mission on digital pedagogy, which sees me working in tandem with Marie-Anne Moreaux, digital strategy officer, and the entire ICTE department team. I represent the school at SAPIENS, USPC's pedagogical support service, coordinate all the school's MOOCs, and am the designer of the Arabic MOOC. The experience of working together on MOOCs is particularly memorable, especially the pooling of our experience and our work together on very different languages.

What was your initial training?

As far back as I can remember, I've always been involved in international affairs and higher education. A grandfather teaching at the University of Teheran, parents working in higher education, researchers and doctoral students from all over the world at dinner, and the travel tales of those around me, it didn't take much to encourage me to follow this almost straightforward path. Yet I was quick to set myself apart from this family tradition.

Directed from an early age towards the sciences, I eventually preferred the humanities, enrolling after the baccalauréat for a double degree in history and English. At the time, I was aiming for the journalism entrance exams. In L3, the question of mobility abroad finally arose. So in 2010-2011, I decided to postpone my plans for a year to take part in the CIEP language assistant program and work as a French teacher in a private English international high school. During this year, I rubbed shoulders with students from the four corners of the world who made me dream of their culture and country.

It was decided. When I get back, I'm going to do a master's degree in international relations! After a stint in the army, I finally returned to higher education by chance, this time in international relations. I found the same cultural mix that I had loved during my year in England. From then on, I never left this field.

Were your first professional steps guided by your studies?

I was immersed in the world of work from a very early age. As early as my 1^er year at university, I started working in various administrative departments in the summer and then all year round, on the one hand to build up solid professional experience that I could use when I finished my degree, but also to earn a few pennies.

I worked on web registration in the general school department, then in a master's program in maintenance and industrial risk management (MMRI), where I was in charge of student management for initial training, apprenticeships and continuing education, as well as events related to this program (advanced training councils, apprenticeship meetings, oral exams, etc.).

On my return from England, I started working at university again, alongside my studies. First in MMRI, then I was given responsibility for managing a degree in international trade and exchanges (initial training and apprenticeship).

After a stint in the army in 2013, in 2014 I coordinated a job placement project for the science and technology faculty of the Université Paris-Est Créteil (UPEC), aimed at better orienting first-year students and reducing the university failure rate.
I was also in charge of the project until 2015. Until 2015, I was also in charge of international relations. That's when something really clicked and I decided to build my career around international university relations. Hence my decision to join the teams at Inalco.

You're still a bit new to Inalco. Do you have a memorable experience to share with us?

One of my most memorable experiences was working for the bilateral cooperation unit of the French Army Staff. I was employed there as a European cooperation officer. Although I had to be rigorous, demanding, respectful of the rules and responsive, I met people there who were human and committed, far removed from the stilted image that can sometimes cling to the skin of the military. I loved their frankness and was very pleasantly surprised by their simplicity and accessibility.

I learned a lot from these people and have some excellent memories of them, like the time when a colleague forgot to lock his computer before leaving his post (safety instruction no. 1) and the section manager hacked into the poor fellow's mailbox to send him a "phone sex" type e-mail to the head of the cell (literally his N+3). I might as well tell you that even now I think twice before leaving my post without having locked my computer. I've also kept the army-standard "Respectfully" that I sign at the end of every e-mail.

Tell us about your experience abroad mentioned above.

I love to travel, but this experience has definitely left its mark on me. It was my year as a language assistant (CIEP program) in England. Between 2010 and 2011, I was assigned to a private international high school in the south of England to teach French in the form of conversation classes. Founded in 1935, the lycée's vocation was to train the English and international elite using a personalized teaching method, i.e. small class sizes (8 maximum), strong pedagogical supervision, curriculum lessons in the mornings and sports or arts lessons in the afternoons, and state-of-the-art infrastructure funded by the school's foundation.

Students and staff had access to stables, an Olympic-size swimming pool, a golf course, soccer and rugby pitches, state-of-the-art music recording studios, and a concert hall/theater regularly used by students for musical and theatrical events, including charity galas.

This immersion in foreign working methods, in a country I knew only through my studies, and in this highly internationalized system of academic excellence, left a deep impression on me. I have very strong memories of this experience, which I would recommend to any language student and especially to those at Inalco, on the one hand for the linguistic immersion, but also for the cultural and professional ones.

A particular attraction for one of the languages and civilizations taught at Inalco?

Because of my origins, I've always wanted to know more about Persian culture and language, but never dared to take the plunge.

It's time to sign up for evening classes! 
Would you like to tell us about another topic to get to know you better?

Welcome! On a lighter note, I'm an avid fan of the Inalco knitting club. I love this activity, which requires patience, attention to detail, concentration, rigor and reflection, but above all creativity. It also allows me to unwind and make new friends outside the workplace. As a rule, I'm also a very creative do-it-yourselfer. Even as a child, I loved to take apart and put back together anything I could get my hands on.

What was your initial training and background before Inalco?

After obtaining my baccalaureate (literary) in Iraq, my country of origin, I came to France in 1976 and never left, except for language stays in Germany and Spain and short trips. I learned French, then studied general and comparative literature at the Université de la Sorbonne-Nouvelle Paris 3; later, I converted to the anthropology of the Arab world at the EHESS (master's degree, then D.E.A.), then submitted a doctoral thesis under the new regime at the Université de la Sorbonne Paris IV, on the translation of European poetry in Arab culture (1995), followed by the CAPES d'arabe (major, 1998) then the Agrégation d'arabe (major, 1999). Secondary school teaching in a number of French towns and lectureships in several universities, followed by appointment as MCF at Inalco in 2002. (HDR defended at Inalco in 2005; appointed Professor of Universities at Inalco in 2010.)




Inalco's Arabic Department 
Were your first professional steps guided by your studies?

In parallel with my university studies, I had to get involved quite early on in the Arab literary press in the diaspora, and also in the literary press in Lebanon, as well as in the translation of literary texts for UNESCO and some Arab publishing houses, in order to support myself but also out of a passion for literature and translation.

What are your areas of research? 

Arabic literature, comparative literatures and the poetics of translation. My field is literature and related fields, the philosophy of literature for example, and literary translation. I have learned as much from books as from encounters and exchanges at literary conferences and events.

Do you have an interest in other languages?

In addition to Arabic, I'm an avid user of French and Spanish, and I understand English and (with the help of dictionaries, however) German.

Your activities as a researcher have led you to work on issues concerning Syrian refugees.

I myself am a former political refugee before becoming a naturalized French citizen. Sensitive to the issues of exile and human rights in the Arab world, I was bound to get involved in debates and meetings concerning Syrian refugees and those from other countries. I should point out that, in the little I have done in this field, I have been greatly helped by my friends and acquaintances among the Syrian writers and artists living in France who know the terrain very well.

What's the background to your participation in the Migrations Cycle?

Our institute, it should be noted, was among the first academic establishments in France to integrate work on refugees into its cultural events. And the Cycle Migrations has the specific and highly satisfying feature of encompassing several regions stricken by violence and emigration or mass immigration, and of multiplying approaches by involving sociologists, anthropologists, psychoanalysts, specialists in international law and asylum policy, as well as artists and writers. In this context, I coordinated the February 15, 2016 meeting, whose program consisted of a theatrical experience focusing on the lives of refugees and performed by Syrian and Palestinian refugees, followed by a debate with Syrian refugee writers. I've also been invited to take part in the last session of the year (June 6 at the Centre Pompidou, 7-9pm), with the theme and title: Périples : langages de l'exil.

Where to find your work to get to know it better?

A few books and speeches, some of which are in French (the rest in Arabic), are available on the internet.

What was your initial training?

Ever since I was a little girl, I've had a vocation to help others.
At the age of 4, I wanted to become a firefighter on horseback. When I was older and more lucid, I had to change my path...
I set my sights on a career in science. Indeed, after obtaining a scientific baccalaureate, I did a degree in biology to work in the forensic police, which I got to know during an internship. In the end, I decided to study osteopathy, which you can practise from the 1st year. I completed this training in 2013.

Why choose Inalco?

Unlike many of my colleagues at Inalco, I didn't take any courses there. However, I did study Chinese for three years in high school. So I've been aware of Oriental cultures and languages since I was a teenager. Maybe one day I'll sign up for courses here... 

Tell us about your first steps and your professional development.

As part of my osteopathic studies, I worked in several private clinics to develop my practical skills. I also worked for a year in a sports club to validate my internship.
In parallel with my studies, I worked as a manager for Jeff de Bruges chocolatier. During this time, my colleague was Amandine Polliart, whose sister was a part-time administrative registrar at Inalco. She told me that the establishment was looking for other temporary employees for this function. As I wasn't convinced that I wanted to work as a freelancer, or sell chocolates all my life, I ventured into the civil service in order to have a wide range of choices for deciding my future.




















Against all odds, I really enjoyed the experience and had the opportunity to be hired in September 2014 as a manager at the Pôle vie étudiante. This was my job for a year and it enabled me to take part in all student life activities: mission handicap, internship agreement, Open Day, student life commission, etc.
Strongly interested in these various missions and supported by my colleagues, when the position of student life manager appeared, I applied straight away. So, in September 2015, I began my new school year as head of the disability, student life and campus life mission.

What are your plans for student life at the school?

Thanks to my duties and my interest in different cultures, I can promote student life and associations within the establishment and make Inalco shine on the scale of the USPC and even wider. For certain events, such as the Inaculturelle, I'd like Inalco to open up even further, thanks to the presence of partners such as CROUS and the Paris City Hall.
The cultural days have a great impact on the school. Cultural days have a big impact on the life of the school, and my aim is to see them multiplied to create a dynamic among students. The themes will be varied and always in line with the missions of my department: I plan to tackle the prevention of various addictions (drugs, alcohol, tobacco), health issues, stress management but also raising awareness of different disabilities, with the participation of students. 
All these activities require a lot of personal commitment and cross-functional work with all departments, which I particularly enjoy. I really enjoy working with our students and associations, even if they sometimes tell me about their project at the last minute... It's at times like these that the patience I've acquired in osteopathy with patients is invaluable!

What was your initial training?

I was born in Suriname, South America, and grew up in the Netherlands. Just before the independence of this Dutch colony, my parents decided to emigrate and settle in Amsterdam, as they feared the political instability of an independent Suriname.

After completing my schooling in the heart of the Dutch capital, I was keen to broaden my cultural horizons and chose to study Indo-Iranian languages and cultures in Leiden. It became very clear to me that my main interest was in ancient languages, so, after the initial year, I enrolled in philological studies, focusing mainly on the Indo-European language family. As I explored the complexities and grammatical subtleties of dozens of ancient and less ancient languages, I became interested in cultural aspects such as the history or migrations of these Indo-European peoples who lived a few thousand years before us. Who were they, what did they think and what did they do? The key has been found in the texts handed down to us by philological researchers, who have had the task of deciphering and interpreting them. I've decided to confine myself to just one branch of the Indo-European language family, Iranian, which itself consists of dozens of languages and dialects: Persian, Pashto, Kurdish, Baluchi, Ossetian, as well as the extinct languages of Sogdian, Khotanese and Avestic. 

As I finalized my thesis on Ossetian, a small Iranian language spoken in the Caucasus, I realized that the heart of my future research would lie in the Near East, specifically in the "Persocentric" part of the Islamic world, an area characterized by a cultural synthesis of Persian/Iranian traditions from the Middle East and the customs of Central Asian Turks. It's a vast and highly influential area, stretching from southeastern Europe to Central and South Asia, and home to the great Persianophile empires of the Abbasids, Samanids, Ghaznavids, Seljuks, Safavids, Ottomans and Indian Mughals. I began to learn and study Persian, including the history and religions of the region. Then I visited Iran and did field research over several years.

- first professional steps: where, when, what choices?

After my thesis defense in 2000, I was offered a short-term postdoctoral contract in Leiden, during which I worked on editing an etymological dictionary of Iranian verbs. In 2010, I was awarded the prestigious Book of the Year prize in Iran for this hard work.

In 2003, I took part in a fascinating project on Bactrian documents, which were discovered during the 1990s. The project took place at Cambridge and was led by the eminent Iranian scholar Nicholas Sims-Williams. The language used in these documents is Bactrian, which until then had been largely unknown. My contribution has been a large database of all the words in these documents. 

After this project came to an end in 2008, I returned to my alma mater, from where I accepted the post of lecturer in Persian.


I continued my research on the Iranian world, while deepening my knowledge of Pashto and Afghanistan, the history and religions of the Near East, including Manichaeism, Zoroastrianism, Persian poetry, normative and heterodox Islam and Islamic Sufism.
. 
- What was it like to arrive in France and join Inalco?

My arrival in France and at Inalco is very recent, dating back to September 2015, thanks to a cultural exchange. Living in France requires a lot of patience and... supporting documents! It's the famous French bureaucracy!

I'm very happy to be working at Inalco, which allows me to do my research with complete peace of mind, being supported by a friendly administration and benevolent (but sometimes difficult to meet!) colleagues. I received a warm welcome from Ms Marie-Caroline Saglio-Yatzimirsky, Mr Abdoulaye Keita and Ms Ursula Baumgardt, who invited me to take part in her seminar. 
In November, I organized a study day entitled "Challenges and definitions of the field", and I must thank our research team managers for the scrupulous care taken with this study day.

I have just completed my seminar on an epistemological reflection of our human area. I was very surprised by the shyness of the students here, a great contrast with the students I knew in Leiden. I hope to continue this seminar next year and continue to encourage students to exploit the facilities they have here at Inalco and open them up to their future careers.

I also have a longer-term project to give some courses on the history of Persian (starting from the old Achaemenid Persian and going up to the new Persian of Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan), and to give an introduction to modern and historical Iranian dialectology, and courses on another marginalized community in the Middle East, the Jews who use an Iranian dialect. I would also take the opportunity to present the methods and results of classical and modern philology.

- Tell us about your experience in the field.

I'm very familiar with the field in Iran, in particular for my research into collecting the tales of the Bakhtiaris, an Iranian-speaking minority known as a "tribe" (due to their specific customs and traditions, and their practice of transhumance).
On the other hand, access to land for Kurdish-speaking Yezidis is not guaranteed. The regions of Syria and Iraq where the Yezidis historically lived near their important sanctuaries are regularly attacked and the populations displaced. Although Iraqi Kurdistan is currently relatively stable, it seems too risky to me at the moment.
Because of their specific religious traditions, the Yezidis were scattered in many other regions. So, the safest areas for the researcher are now Georgia and Armenia, where the Yezidis were exiled towards the end of the Ottoman Empire. Of course, I'll also be interviewing the Yezidi communities that have settled in Europe, especially in Germany, where the vast majority of Turkish Yezidis now live following the great persecutions of the 80s and 90s in Turkey. 

- Do you have, or have you had, an attraction to other world languages and cultures, or other disciplines?

Although I'm trained as a classical linguist and philologist, trying to understand the text and its contextuality from an etymological and comparative point of view, I'm often surprised by the amount of information about customs and traditions or religious and cultural views that can be "extracted" from texts through such philological analysis, even about their interactions with other peoples or ethnicities. So, I'm exploiting this "updated" approach for my current research into the literatures of the Iranian-speaking minorities of the Yezidis and Bakhtiaris, whose systematic collection will enable me to uncover information about their cultural, religious and historical framework in the Near East. 

Concretely, using this methodology, I have been able to demonstrate, outside the strictly Iranian sphere, that an Iranian religious influence on the Koran would be present, but at a superficial level, and that the founders of the first Turkish empire, the Köktürks, probably belonged to a people who were related to the Mongols.
. I'd like to take this opportunity to mention the source of inspiration for this modernized methodology: it's my former colleague and good, well-respected friend, the Leiden-based Turkologist Uwe Bläsing. He applied this method with great success when working on the influences of Armenian and Armenians on modern Turkish in Turkey. So much so that no Turkish researcher, nationalist or otherwise, dares challenge them.

- What are your areas of research at Inalco?

I'm a member of the Iranian and Indian Worlds research team, currently headed by Ms. Pollet Samvelian, specifically the "Iranian and Indian Worlds languages" axis. Also, through my philological and linguistic training, I am attached to the Labex Fondements empiriques de la linguistique (EFL), whose axis "Languages, dialects and isoglosses in the West-Asian area " is the most relevant.

- Did your research activities lead you to become a laureate of the INALCO-USPC Chair of Excellence?

It's a bit awkward to answer this question. You know, we don't do research in an ivory tower... Perhaps what made the INALCO-USPC Chair of Excellence possible was the diversity of my professional and academic activities, as I've described them to you. Although I've only recently become attached to Inalco, I seem to observe that many of the institution's colleagues work alone, either by choice or necessity. I have met a number of colleagues from my geographical or cultural area, not all of whom have yet led to future collaborations.
It's a pity, but it's a good thing. It's a shame, but on the other hand, I look forward to participating in events with USPC institutions whose research fields are related to those of Inalco. I fully subscribe to the traditional "spirit" of Inalco, which emphasizes the diversity of the world's languages and civilizations. In my opinion, as a member of Inalco's scientific community, you have to look for connections with other disciplines, even if the region of the others is further away from your own. It's also very true that we're often short of time.

Getting back to the project we've chosen, we have a good foundation, based on current world issues. It is within this framework that I have chosen to collect and analyze the oral literature of the Yezidis and Bakhtiâris, two Iranian-speaking groups whose cultural heritage is threatened with physical or political extinction.

- You're also scheduled as part of the Migrations Cycle in April

This "Migrations" cycle is an excellent example of collaboration and showcasing the diverse knowledge and expertise available at Inalco and its partners. It helps to explain the world's current problems to the general public, who are often only informed by everyday media. That's why I immediately agreed to take part in April, to present the plight of the Yezidis. In my view, it's a moral duty to inform and initiate discussion based on the knowledge and experience of researchers. Even if one suffers a little from stage fright - as I do - the current desperate plight of refugees, who wash up on Europe's beaches every day, including the Yezidis, makes it imperative to speak out and communicate.

It's often difficult to escape a partisan stance. If we take the example of the historical migrations of German-speaking peoples fleeing the approach of the Huns in the IV-VII centuries, we can only observe the difference in point of view depending on one's geographical location. These flows of Germanic tribes into Western Europe are referred to as the "Great Barbarian Invasions" in school textbooks in France, but are better known by a less insulting designation, such as "La migration des peuples" in Germany (Völkerwanderung), and in other German-speaking countries. Today, these flows are undoubtedly interpreted differently in France and Germany.

It's up to us specialists to nuance and recontextualize today's major population flows, lowering the high expectations of naive optimists as well as the apocalyptic fears of distrustful pessimists at the arrival of refugees and migrants at Europe's gates.

Photo credit: Yathreb HADDAR for Inalco

Let's start at the beginning, what was your initial training?

Actually, I'm self-taught! That meant I was able to work in a number of different professions before finding my calling. Before coming to Inalco, I worked in the registry office of a town hall, with access to (dusty!) 19th century archives, but I also worked in construction and even learned to cut glass... I then moved on to a variety of experiences, before returning to administration and discovering a rewarding mission in the management and stewardship department of a secondary school. This guided me in my choices and my motivation to enter national education.

Your arrival at Inalco?

I was appointed to Inalco in 1992, following the successful completion of an administrative competitive examination, and assigned to the DRH, the overtime office. I discovered a special, difficult but rewarding world. In any case, very formative on a professional level.

You've movedat Inalco, changed departments... What is your background?

The position in HRD gave me an insight into the teaching population. In 2002, I passed another competitive examination and was normally required to leave the school. What a surprise when I received my posting... I was appointed to Inalco! There was no position available in HRD and I wanted to change. That's how I ended up in charge of the APOGEE unit, which was responsible for modeling the entire training offer! It was a real change of scenery from the HR department to the school department, with its world of students and courses of all kinds, the pleasures of the transition from the DULCO to the LMD in 2006, and still the contact with teachers, but from a totally different angle.

In 2011, I seized the opportunity to work directly with the management controller. Let's use a metaphor to help us understand: a car's dashboard is made up of a set of indicators and telltales that inform the driver about the engine's performance and driving parameters (instantaneous speed, outside temperature). Well, it's the same for Inalco; in the field of schooling, for example, it means creating indicators on the student population and their expectations. These results will help the school's management make decisions. These indicators also feed into the five-year contract and the accreditation of our national diplomas. 
You've had new duties for a few months now...? What are they?

I'm in charge of the training department (DIFOR), which was created in March 2015. This new 7-person structure brings together the APOGEE unit and the scheduling and examinations office. The department's objectives: to develop and steer the training offering, to draw up a strategy that enables this offering to be organized, enhanced and developed in line with needs, and to prepare for future accreditation. This involves managing student surveys and updating departmental and internal indicators. We are also in charge of all tasks relating to the President of the EC, as well as the secretariat of the Studies Committee. We are also responsible for updating brochures in line with the APOGEE curriculum. 
The APOGEE unit models the entire training offer and writes the rules for calculating diplomas, while the scheduling office has to find rooms for over 3,500 courses. 
Teachers can also contact us for personalized statistics on the language they teach.

How to access all this information when you're a novice?

Since 2012, I've been writing a brochure called "Planète étudiante Inalco". This document is an annual "snapshot" that helps us get to know our student public better and fine-tune our training offer.
[EDITOR'S NOTE. The latest 2014/2015 version is available for download in this Internal Letter].

Finally, the flagship project for 2016 is the implementation of the AMETYS application, which involves modeling our training offer in a common application for our COMUE. To this end, we are working with the digital strategy and projects unit to integrate Inalco's training courses.

Activities outside Inalco?

Yes, several. I played a checkers competitively at international level, which enabled me to obtain the rank of international federal master. Today, the national level is more than enough for me, as I still play competitively, but now as a dilettante!

Laurent SAGART : director of research CRLAO - CNRS - Inalco - Ehess

What was your initial training, your background before Inalco? 

After the baccalaureate (1968) I began studying linguistics at Vincennes and simultaneously Chinese at Paris 7, which I continued in Bordeaux. Back in Paris, I attended seminars at the Centre de Recherches Linguistiques sur l'Asie Orientale (CRLAO), of which I am now a member. Maîtrise (bachelor's degree) in Chinese at Paris 7, followed by military service in Hong Kong in 1975-77, where I taught French at a Chinese university 
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It was a real immersion in language and civilization!

In Hong Kong I learned a little Cantonese and conducted a field survey on the hakka of the new territories. This led to a post-graduate thesis (Paris 7). Then I spent a year as a scholarship student in Beijing, then Nanjing, where I investigated Jiangsu dialects.

What did you plan to do when you returned to France?

Back in France, I worked a series of odd jobs and vacancies in linguistics (on the comparative babbling of French, Cantonese and Algerian children) until I was recruited to work in linguistics at the CNRS in 1981. There, I first studied the dialects of Jiangxi, where I carried out several surveys. My doctorate (Aix-Marseille I, 1990) was devoted to them. At the same time, in order to learn a Tibeto-Burmese language, I attended Madame Bernot's Burmese language courses at Inalco.

So this is really where you make your entrance to Inalco?

Yes, I did. I then spent two years (1987-1989) teaching Chinese dialectology at Ts'inghua University in Taiwan. My interests diversified: I became interested in the deeper diachrony of Chinese as well as its genetic relationships. Since 1991, I've been defending (against the current) the idea that Chinese is related to Austronesian languages (Taiwan-Philippines-Indonesia-Pacific).

You are the 2016 winner of the prestigious Leonard Bloomfield Prize. For what work and how did it come about?

The reconstruction of archaic Chinese (the language of Confucius, more or less) is the subject that won William Baxter, my colleague at the University of Michigan, and myself the Bloomfield Prize. Our ideas are collected in the book "Old Chinese: A new Reconstruction" (Oxford University Press, 2014). Writing it took us around ten years, with almost weekly meetings by videoconference. The support of my lab, CRLAO, and of Inalco, which has housed our team since 2008, first in Nogent and now rue de Lille, has been decisive in bringing this work to fruition.
 

What was your initial training, your background before Inalco?

Being born in Berry, in the heart of France, neither my family nor circumstances predestined me to study Chinese, and yet, for as long as I can remember, I've always dreamed of going to China and especially of discovering the meaning of the ideograms that fascinated me. However, I had to override my parents' wishes and "go up" to Paris to study at Langues O', where I began my studies in 1966.
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How did your time at Inalco go? Did you already have other activities in addition to your studies?

During my studies, I did odd jobs at our school: back-to-school registrations and I was a fudaoyuan 辅导员 (teaching assistant) during the 1969- 1970 year. I also took oriental music classes at the Centre Michelet and learned to play the two-string violin (erhu 二胡). After graduating in 1969, I obtained a degree in Chinese from Paris VII (Censier) in 1970. Longing to go to China, I studied for two years in Taiwan at the University of Political Science (国立政治大学) and returned to Paris to submit my master's thesis in June 1972. Unable to join Peking as a student as I had hoped, I attended the CPEI, which had just been set up two years earlier, while working as a laboratory technician at Inalco.
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What were your first professional steps outside Inalco? You have a wealth of experience in Asia...

At the start of the 1973 school year, I taught Chinese as an auxiliary teacher at the Lycées Racine and François Villon, for a short time (only one term) because I was recruited by Air France to open its representative office in Beijing.
Initially hired for one year, I spent over seven years in China between 1974 and 1982. For me, these were the happiest years of my life. After joining the French airline company, that's where my professional career finally took off.
I'm very much influenced by my Chinese background. I was very much influenced by my Chinese tendencies, so when I returned from Beijing, I had to be flexible. Returning to the head office of a major company was not easy, as the range of responsibilities was more restricted than in a highly versatile expatriate position. I did, however, hold a number of very different positions that broadened my knowledge: tariff regulations, international affairs (negotiating air and trade agreements) and, after a brief stint as sales manager for Air France Cars, I helped set up an Economic Intelligence unit in 1996, a department in which I ended my career at the end of September 2007.

A truly diversified career indeed...

To current students, I would say that having learned a language with a reputation for difficulty has often meant that I have been preferred to other, certainly more competent, candidates, but the choice has been based on an ability to overcome difficulties. What's more, the fact that I agreed to do things for which I had no natural inclination was not a hindrance to my career progression.

Let's now return to your commitment to Inalco as an alumnus.

I joined the Alumni Association after my return to France (1983). I became involved by joining the Board of Directors in 1991. Over the course of 24 years, I held a number of positions on the board: General Secretary, Vice-President and Treasurer, and succeeded Michel Perret as President in June 2007.
With the members of the Board of Directors, I'm delighted to be here. With the members of the Board of Directors, I have been responsible for a number of projects that have come to fruition: the regular publication of our newsletter Orients (three times a year for the past 7 years), the revision of our image with the creation of a logo, and the rapprochement with student associations, made possible by the fact that the school itself is now housed in the same building. Throughout all these years, I have endeavored to bring the association to a successful conclusion, trying to make it keep the promise of its objectives.

Do you have any new projects with the association?

I've begun a dialogue with Inalco that should bear new fruit, notably the creation of an Inalco-Langues O' alumni network like those that exist in all the grandes écoles. Once this network has taken shape and taken on a life of its own, I think it'll be time for me to step aside 
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It's a project that's also supported by the SIO-IP (information, orientation and professional integration service). The launch party for this new alumni networking tool will be held on Monday November 23.

To conclude our interview, have you had any other activities outside of everything you've done at Inalco?

Even though Langues O' and Inalco have played a very important role in my life, I've also devoted myself to other activities, particularly in my native province, to which I've remained deeply attached:
- I was a local councillor from 1983 to 1989, and again from 2008 to 2014,
. - I created and chaired for 10 years (from 1983 to 1993) an association for the preservation of a listed historical monument (12th century church), organizing concerts and exhibitions.

Theater and music have played a very important role in my life. In addition to my work at Air France, I studied acting at the Cours Simon for three years, and have been taking opera singing classes for several years.

Mr. Zécler, you took up your position at Inalco on September 1. In order to get to know you better, could you tell us about your initial training?

I have a classic background in law. You might think that this wouldn't predispose you to becoming a public finance inspector, but apart from the fact that the competitive examination included some fairly demanding legal tests, there are many legal and regulatory aspects to my job. My first post was in Corsica, in a rural treasury. I chose this position. I was firmly convinced that I was going to learn my trade as close to the ground as possible. I spent five very rewarding years there, both personally and professionally. I'd like to take this opportunity to dispel a common misconception: tax evasion in Corsica is no more significant than elsewhere - and 98% of Corsicans pay their taxes! 
What other experiences have you had?

After Corsica, I spent two years with the Ministry of Defense. I wanted to take up a position in a central administration, to familiarize myself with the problems of the State, which, in this case, is trying to evaluate and value its military assets, which is not an easy thing to do (an aircraft carrier isn't listed at the Argus!). I then went on to Nigeria, the little-known and little-perceived giant of Africa. I was obviously keen to discover a culture that was different from our own, but which had particular resonances for me (because of my family history). At the end of my mission, I was asked to go to Israel. I stayed for three years. 

All these experiences have something in common: they have been personally enriching (and the civil service is hardly the only place to offer such a wide range of positions to those who want them); they have enabled me to deepen my knowledge of my profession, at all levels and in all its dimensions, particularly the IT aspects, which are very much in evidence today. I often say that I'm a dresser of rebellious computer applications when I want to sum up my job!

The other aspect of my job is the human side. People often think that public accounting is "disembodied". It's quite the opposite. An accounting operation is often nothing more than the reflection of a slice of life, sometimes a colorful one at that! 
Do you have a particular interest in world languages and cultures? 


I'm not going to lie: my mastery of Hausa and Hebrew is still far from perfect, and Inalco didn't hire me to be a reader! On the other hand, world cultures have always attracted me. When you come face to face with them, you discover a double reality: France is not the center of the world (and that's fine); the French quality of life is nevertheless absolutely remarkable (and that's fine too). In the end, I'm convinced that opening up to the world doesn't mean you'll stop loving your country. You simply learn to look at it differently.

What motivated your arrival at Inalco? Can you give us a brief description of your position, missions and responsibilities?

After my five years in Nigeria and Israel, my wife and I felt that a return to France was timely. I also wanted to continue working as an accountant. So I looked for an agency in Paris. Inalco was naturally one of my first choices - and I was delighted to be appointed there.

My duties at Inalco are those of an accountant. I supervise the work of a team - and we produce annual accounts. I also provide advice and assistance, particularly, but not only, to the presidency. But these days, an accountant can't just do that. The rules are changing - and a succession of financial reforms are on the horizon. Today, a public accountant is at the heart of government reform.

Do you have any activities outside Inalco?

I teach law at Paris 1... But it's really not my main activity!
Otherwise, very prosaically, I... garden.

What did you do before coming to Inalco? What initial training did you have? How did you end up at Inalco and what is it for? 
I did a bac ES in Cergy in 1995. At the same time, in this suburban high school, there was a specialized program called "préparation à l'entrée en Grandes écoles" (preparation for entry to the Grandes Ecoles), with classes to reinforce English, history, geopolitics, general culture and methodology, to prepare us for the competitive entrance exams. I wanted to take the Sciences Po entrance exam, but I quickly realized that I wouldn't be comfortable taking it. I already had a fairly well-developed passion for Asia in general, and Japan in particular, but through contacts with the Cantonese community in Cergy, they introduced me to aspects of Korean culture that I didn't know at all, particularly TV series, subtitled in English or French by fans. I started to discover this and, as a result, I became interested in Korea too.

As I wasn't a very serious student, my parents put it to me this way: "Bryan, if you pass your bac, we'll buy you a trip to Japan". I passed with 10.5, so I left in the summer of 2009. I had planned to stop over in Korea for a week at the beginning of the trip, after watching a few TV series and listening to some music that was starting to make a name for itself. I arrived in Seoul alone, at Incheon airport, on my 18th birthday. I didn't necessarily have a very specific "Korea dream", unlike my "Japan dream". But when it comes to Korea (North Korea, we'll be talking about missiles and the Kims) and South Korea, we'll just be talking about cars and computers, that's all. Especially in 2009!
So much so that when I arrived in Seoul, I had a real blast with this discovery! Korea asked me so many questions that I'm still not out of it! 
As I'd done this "Sciences Po prep school" and got very good marks in Economics and Political Science, I wanted to go into Japan/Korea trade, so I followed the CPEI course at Inalco. But this first trip triggered a series of changes in my Asian desires: no more CPEI, just as much passion for Japan, but much more questioning about Korea. Arrival at Incheon, the world's largest airport, on an island facing North Korea. Minibus, bridge crossing and arrival in the suburbs of Seoul, with huge towers numbered from 355 to 1 on acres of land! Then, arriving in downtown Seoul (Yoido), an island in the middle of Seoul's great river, gave me the impression of being at La Défense. Walking around the city, which was then undergoing major construction following the election of the ecologists to the mayor's office, I saw the "future".
Whereas in Japan, an industrialized country, it's the future. Whereas in Japan, an industrialized country long before Korea, we saw older buildings dating back to the 1980s. This reflected much less dynamism, and I got what I expected. Korea, on the other hand, was a real shock.

This is when you entered Inalco
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Yes, I already knew that I wanted to enroll at Inalco in Japanese. I had discovered Inalco by typing on the internet: "Japanese Korean Paris" and getting the results Paris Diderot and Inalco. I went to both pre-entries and what interested me most about Inalco was that I could do the double-curriculum. I was told I was going to "wallow" and that's what happened to me! So, when I arrived at Inalco in Korean and Japanese, so at Dauphine and Clichy, it was hell and fun at the same time.
So I doubled up my first year at Inalco. So I doubled my first year with the same languages, then stayed in Korean, specializing in history, because of all the questions Korea had asked me. As Patrick Maurus says, you never arrive in Korea by chance. But my generation is the first to arrive in Korea BY Korea, because we now know it. Before, it was through China or Japan. At the same time, you can't love Korea without looking beyond it: towards Mongolia (more than a century of occupation), Japan, China, Vietnam... So it's the areal zone that you have to get to know. A zone that I call the "Sinicized area", from the Mekong delta to Hokkaidō. These states were built on classical Chinese models. This is what I'm trying to demonstrate through my research. At the same time, it's not just China, and it's enough to find the other influences; the subject of my M2 work.

What are the particularities of the Korean section at Inalco?

I've opened up my studies to all the Sinicized languages at Inalco: Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, Korean. I've now entered into comparative historical work, but I can't see any difference between the sections: their organization, their teaching, their students. There's good and bad. You stay close when you embrace these languages and cultures. It's a thousand years of Chinese influence, the north-south separation, the painful reunification. All this is taught in much the same way from one section to the next. What's more, as soon as we feel passionate about a subject, we can talk to the teachers about it, and they're always very close. Inalco is a family! And that's where all the questions come in.

Hence the commitment to associations?

Totally! Those who join associations are students who don't find the answers to their questions in their course and need to have an answer. It's a personal stimulation that they share with others.
In Korean, we had a shortage of teachers; this was a point of struggle for the association. Now, we also have a lack of dynamism, a lack of perspective, a lack of desire. We don't give students the means to take charge of their own abilities and willpower. Those who succeed are hyper-autonomous. That's why I say to all students: "Take charge, join an association, send e-mails to people you think are concerned by your issues and organize a conference!"

My entry into the association world at Inalco came at a Korea Day. And then in our association, we consider that Korean isn't represented enough, and that we're a bit "unloved" in the establishment. This motivated us to move forward, to do things, to energize the Korean section. And then there's the building, which encourages us to work together in ways that go beyond simple cohabitation. This building has the merit of having this corridor of associations where all the doors are open, so we talk to each other, we help each other out, and we have very interesting common questioning constructions.

But let's make no mistake: in Inalco's associations, there is on the one hand -at the beginning- the "folkloric" with the days, the food on the 2nd floor, etc. -that's the visibility of Inalco. -This is the association's visibility. And then the second layer - as you mature and advance in your curriculum - is courses, conferences, etc., where you indulge yourself and open up to your personal passions. In reality, you're fighting against a frustration and discovering an autonomy that courses, which push you to be passive, don't develop. A good example is the work developed by Idrissa Konté with Afr'Inalco.

Hence a certain amount of competition between students?

It's inevitable. A language isn't just a desire, it has to become a professional project, but there's no secret about it, you've got to go!!
Korea is a very special country for a French person. We don't have the tools to understand this culture, which is very different, extremely Confucianized, with different rules. The décor may seem the same, the clothes, etc., but that's just an illusion.
You can translate almost any word into Korean: democracy, history, geography, territory, except that there isn't the same history behind it, the same construction, and speaking with a Korean is tricky if you don't have the tools of civilization (history, context, etc.). A city in Korea is not a city in France, working in Korea is not working in France, a Korean company is not a company in France. Seoul is home to 35 million people, the world's second-largest metropolitan area, half the size of France and the size of Belgium. It's a different world. Arriving in Seoul is almost 20 years behind France, while in the countryside, toilets are still outside the house. Korea is postmodernism!

If you haven't been to Korea before L3, you're lost and you've wasted your language years. You have to live the country whose language you're studying! Know why you're there, at Inalco!
Teachers also need to pass on the keys to reading, not just the language and its grammar. It's a bit difficult for someone who was born in Korea to pass on the codes. And in the Korean section, if you're ever in a slump, there's Madame JEONG, the mother of the section, whom you'll cherish if you come to study Korean...
. She knows how to talk about the construction of the Korean people through literature with great accuracy. Literature of the first Koreans to write in Korean, literature of the Japanese occupation, etc.
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Then, whether in literature, gastronomy or history, the same questions of identity arise: What is Korean in Korean culture? What is imported?

You can't teach a language and civilization the way they do over there. We begin a language with different knowledge from native speakers. So we learn it with our own resources, and then we can dig deeper with, for example, Yoann Goudin's courses, which help us understand the common lexical background between Sinicized languages based on ideograms, or Pénélope Rigoux in Chinese civilization, a field researcher who passes on her findings directly and then moves on to another research topic, constantly renewing herself. This type of teacher-researcher is not sufficiently represented at Inalco.

They are the ones who inspire people to want to do research?

Yes, people who love what they do and know how to share it. People who make you want to leave and go out into the field. Students need to be encouraged to leave. Not enough of them come and go within the framework of university. You can't wait for a Master's degree to do research. There are CPEI and HEI courses right from the bachelor's degree, for people who are already oriented towards business or international relations. We need research courses right from the bachelor's degree to encourage students to go further. In our masters programs, there's a balance between teaching and research, but too little research.

Professors also need to introduce students to research programs and keep them informed. There's a huge lack of communication here about the scientific activity of our teacher-researchers. We don't know, they don't tell us; when they appear in the media, when they publish in the press, in journals, or participate in books. When I open the magazine Histoire and see an article by my methodology teacher Vanessa Van Renterghem on medieval Islam, I'm happy, I buy the magazine, I'm proud of my school; even if the subject isn't directly related to my work.
In fact, scientific communication is essential to the success of our company. In fact, we need more effective scientific communication aimed at students and internally, and a different kind of communication aimed externally. It's not just at doctoral level that people are interested in research topics and productions! There has to be a political will behind this communication!

We could cross-fertilize areas on a theme: for example, a day on archaeology at Inalco. But we need to energize and diversify our proposals for meetings, symposia and scientific discovery. But there's no such commitment here. For the European Heritage Days, we could propose a cross-cutting theme on Inalco's cultural areas. 
Wouldn't this open the door to thematic teaching paths?

Yes, it could. I think the coming years are going to be constructive, particularly in terms of discipline, which should take off with history courses, anthropology courses and so on. Cultural areas are fundamental, but we need to redefine them, because they are presented from a far too Eurocentric point of view: South-East Asia means nothing, it's a colonial concept, these countries have nothing in common.


When it comes to cross-disciplinary subjects, it's time to break away from what already exists, to be daring, even if it means being innovative! No more history of classical China, but a civilization course on the cultural area of Sinicized countries. At the risk of displeasing today's teachers. Yes, Japan was sinicized. Yes, Korea was invaded by the Mongols. We have to be daring, especially as far as teachers are concerned, but we have to find those who can give these courses, because teachers are very nationalistic, which is normal. My generation wants to break new ground in cross-cutting, transnational subjects. 

How do you experience your role as a student representative?

To be legitimate, you need a list with students representing as many languages as possible. With open-minded people. Our list featured students who are all double-majors. I see my representation as a passion for others, an openness. My commitment is to the interests of Inalco students in the job market and in research. Our added value is oriental languages. And then there's the Langues O' spirit. Otherwise, I would have gone to another university. Here, we can offer a day on classical Chinese and Korean manuscripts and those of Timbuktu. This is something only Inalco can do, and it's Inalco's duty to do it, so we're pushing for this opening. As a student representative, you have to talk to everyone, see the dynamics between departments and sections, which are not the same. Learning Chinese in a large group is not the same as learning Indo-Malay in a small group. You need a rich and lively intercomprehension!

At SOAS, Padua, Venice or other schools in Europe, we cross disciplines and cultural areas. We need to move in this direction, because outside Inalco, as researchers, we're told that we're very strong in language and civics, but that we're not historians, sociologists, geographers and so on. That's true, but we also need to rethink our disciplinary approach and avoid doing things the Western way! Because we end up like the Japanese saying that when a Westerner arrives in Japan, the first year he writes a book, the second an article and the third he keeps quiet! So there's no point in being there if you haven't mastered a methodology of deconstruction applied to the country.

Then there's the need for a disciplinary technical methodology, such as learning how to use cartography software, how to process archives and so on. Learn to read a map, but not the Western way (we do it in high school). Reading an Indonesian map based on a Buddhist model (no north, no south, concentric map) and on a postislamic model (horizontal, because time in Islam is linear) is not something we can learn from the École des Annales or Jacques le Goff. We don't learn history or geography in the same way in the European world, the Arab world or the Sinicized world 
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We need to find other tools, those for reading and writing the areas we're studying. And that's what we're fighting for as student representatives. To push for the creation of new courses, in addition to language courses, that modernize the reading of the worlds we study. As one Georgian teacher put it, "Civilization without language is like tomatoes without soil, it has no taste, it has no flavor." Studying Vietnamese history without speaking Vietnamese is pointless. Vietnam is civilized enough to write its own history. We can no longer think of doing history from a colonialist point of view; we need to cross our points of view and take a step back, especially for a Confucian civilization.
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Are the student representatives on the studies committee calling for the creation of these more technical courses, these tools that would serve you right from the start in research?

Yes, absolutely! Learning how to draw up a bibliography at the start of the curriculum is necessary, but repeating this teaching later, in the Master's program, is redundant. We need to be offered something else, some concrete tools to help us move forward. It's purely methodological. And then, there's a graduation: then, there's the methodology of the area, because each area has its own logic. Then there's civilization WITH language. Once that's in place, Inalco is back in business for another 350 years!

What was your initial training? 

After a year of German, followed by literary studies (a bachelor's degree in modern literature) at Rennes 2 Haute Bretagne University, I took the competitive examination for the Ecole nationale supérieure de la photographie in Arles. I entered in 2001 and graduated in 2004 with the highest honors. 
And what led you to discover Bengali culture?

In 1999, I went for the first time to a small village in West Bengal, north of Calcutta, on the border with Bangladesh. The village, which came into being in the early 1980s, is home to Hindu families originally from Bangladesh. I spent 3 months there, and fell under the spell of the village, its inhabitants and the Bengali culture. I began to immerse myself in the language, getting together every evening with a group of village workers to teach a little French and learn a few words of Bengali.


























And you went on to study "bangla".

Friendships and photography take me back there every year, but it wasn't until recently that I decided to really learn Bengali. I wanted to go further in discovering this language that fascinates me, to communicate more easily and get even more out of the encounters I make through photography. There, in that small village in Indian Bengal, but also, more recently, in Paris: I started working with the Bangladeshi community. Being able to express myself, and above all, understand, is a very precious help and opens a lot of doors for me. I'm hoping to complete my degree, and being able to read in the text is a great motivation!

You also have other activities, can you tell us about them?

I'm freelance photographer. I mainly do portraits, often very posed, staged, drawing a lot of inspiration from literature and myths and beliefs. This comes partly from my literature studies. In the end, everything is linked in my career path.

For a long time, I photographed young women in the countryside, and in a more recent series, I had Emmaüs companions pose with me, imagining characters and taking on different roles for the duration of the shoot. And then there's a whole Indian part of my work, in which I have the inhabitants of the village of Ushagram (the village of dawn, in Bengali) pose in their own environment. Obviously, for this work in particular, it's very important for me to be able to talk to the inhabitants in their own language, as this changes our relationship with each other. I've also recently started working with an association called "Photographisme- Photomorphisme", which is developing a number of photographic projects, and where I'm responsible in particular for setting up an exhibition project with 25 photographers.

Photography, the Bengali language and Bengal, where I hope to spend more and more time, are the reasons for my studies at Inalco.


























Finally, for the past two years, I've been the Inalco photographer! I've taken photos of the building, staff and students at Inalco during festivities and student projects. It's a great pleasure to link my presence at Inalco as a student and a particular look that is often subject to commissions from the direction de la communication.

A teacher at Inalco for over fifteen years, Marie-Caroline Saglio-Yatzimirsky has always been involved in the life of the Institute. She is now part of the establishment's management as Vice-Chairwoman of Inalco's Scientific Council, elected just a month ago. Interview.

What is your initial training? 

I trained in literature (ENS Saint-Cloud), social sciences and economics (agrégation, HEC) and as a clinical psychologist. I discovered India on my return from an internship in Singapore, and it was a shock: the discovery of an intensely poetic world, full of analogies, where the human dimension turns your reference points upside down. So I decided to immerse myself in it, and enrolled for a thesis in anthropology at EHESS and as an auditor of Hindi at Inalco - even though my field language was Marathi. I spent three years between my ATER post and my fieldwork in Maharashtra, where I lived among the poor and stigmatized so-called untouchable castes, studying their dynamics of social mobility as well as the symbolic violence and politicization of the caste system.
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How did you get started at Inalco?

I was recruited as a lecturer in 1998. At the time, the South Asia Department (ASU) was headed by Éric Meyer, who inspired me greatly with his exciting and accessible teaching. This multilingual department is a place of exchange between different traditions; it has recently opened up to Tibetan and Nepali. I have taught a wide range of courses, from anthropology to the economics of contemporary India, from methodology to the post-colonial question. The Inalco public is endearing, sometimes heterogeneous but always enthusiastic. As a researcher, I am a member of the Centre d'Études en Sciences Sociales sur les Mondes Africains, Américains et Asiatiques, which is a promising collaboration between Inalco, the Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD) and Paris-Denis Diderot.

Have you had opportunities to pursue research work elsewhere?

I was lucky enough to be seconded for 3 years to the Institute of Advanced Studies at the University of Sao Paulo (Brazil), where I set up an ANR (National Research Agency) project on social exclusion in Indian and Brazilian megacities. In 2010, I took advantage of the Institut Universitaire de France (IUF) to launch a research project combining anthropology and psychology on migration, metropolises and mental health. I'm continuing my fieldwork in India and Brazil on these issues, while working one day a week as a clinician at the Avicenne hospital in the psycho-trauma clinic, which treats asylum seekers in particular. My latest publications deal with these issues[1].
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Today you're taking on a new role as Vice-Chairman of Inalco's Scientific Advisory Board, can you tell us about the challenges you're facing?

We're at a pivotal moment for research at Inalco. I ran for Vice-Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board precisely to work in this new context with a very dynamic Inalco Management. One of my first objectives is to ensure that our teaching researchers have the most stimulating scientific environment possible, by supporting their projects and strengthening the research units. Career development and recruitment are also at the heart of our concerns. We face new challenges, such as the coherent articulation between cultural areas and disciplines, and the training and professionalization of our students. We also need to define a digital policy for our researchers, which includes the Presses de l'Inalco (a subject that will be developed in a forthcoming internal newsletter), open access and so on. Finally, we need to position ourselves clearly in the new environment of the COMUE USPC, which will enable us to collaborate more widely and more internationally.

In this context, can you sum up your ambition for research at Inalco?

My aim is to give Inalco the means to achieve its research ambitions, to make it the Institute where an open spirit reigns and which knows how to intelligently pose the question of culture, with unrivalled scientific expertise. And to successfully implement this research policy, I'm not alone. I'm counting on the commitment of Inalco's Scientific Advisory Board and teaching and research staff. Leading such a team is an exceptional opportunity.

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[1] - Dharavi: from mega slum to urban paradigm, Delhi, Routledge, 2013.
- Mega city slums: Social Exclusion, Space and Urban policies in Brazil and India (ed. with F. Landy), London, Imperial College Press, 2014.
- Mixing tīrttam and tablets- A healing proposal for mentally ill patients in Gunaseelam (South India) (with B. Sébastia), Anthropology and Medicine, 2014.
- Le trauma: du retournement de la culture à la nature humaine, Nature ou culture, dir. P, Bonin and T. Pozzo, IUF, Presses universitaires de Saint-Etienne, 2015.
 

Thank you, Idrissa Konté, for agreeing to this interview during the sensitive period of preparation for the January exams.

First of all, I'd like to thank the Presidency for choosing me. An opportunity to talk about my attachment to the school and above all my commitments to student life as President of the Africa department student association (Afrinalco) and student representative on the board of directors and the Africa department.

Talking about oneself is not an easy thing in my culture, as the Bambara say "Maat'i yɛrɛ fɔ" - "One is not the best person to talk about oneself".

Let's start at the beginning, what was your initial training?

My name is Idrissa Konté, born in Maréna (cercle de Yélimané) in the Kayes region of Mali, where I spent the first two years of my schooling at elementary school before continuing my studies at college in the town of Kayes.

After passing my baccalauréat in 2006 at the Lycée Dougoukolo Konaré in Kayes, I moved to Bamako to continue my higher education, where I enrolled at the Faculté des Langues Lettres et Sciences Humaines mention "Anglais" (FLASH) at the Université de Bamako. As I had always wanted to continue my studies in France, after obtaining my DEUG in 2008, I began the process and in 2009, I obtained my visa to continue my studies at the University of Paris 3 - Sorbonne nouvelle.
































So you began your schooling in French. Then, how did your discovery of languages and cultures go?

Being immersed in a multicultural and therefore multilingual environment, I've been lucky enough to discover languages, particularly African ones like Soninke and Bambara (which are my mother tongues), Peul, Khassoké, Maninka etc., since my early childhood.

As for foreign languages, I first discovered French, which is the language of instruction in Mali, and then English from secondary school onwards. So I wouldn't say that I discovered languages, but that I was born into them, and this linguistic and cultural diversity has always accompanied me in my academic and professional life.

Your arrival at Inalco and your studies with us?

I discovered Inalco, which I hadn't known existed before, as part of my Master 1 dissertation at Paris 3, which dealt with comparative linguistics between English and Bambara verbs and verb classes. It was during an exchange with my thesis supervisor, Éric Corre, Director of the English-speaking World of Paris 3, that I learned of the existence of an establishment where one could learn Bambara and Soninke.
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In 2011, I enrolled as a minor in the master's program to take only the grammar course, which could help me with my research. After careful consideration, I decided that describing or teaching English still appealed to me, but that I would prefer to do the same with my mother tongues (especially as there is a real need for trainers in these). What's more, this year's introduction to Bambara grammar has given me the chance to meet some very interesting people. 
Thanks to its linguistic and socio-cultural diversity, Inalco proved to be a second home from my very first year, reconnecting me to my origins and my culture, and providing me with an atmosphere in which I could express and assert my values.


The uniqueness of Inalco lies on the one hand in its cosmopolitan aspect, both in terms of students and administration, and on the other in its very natural ability to create an atmosphere that facilitates contact with others, and access to information about the general workings of the administration and the various courses on offer. Once inside the school, for example, I discovered the existence of vocational training courses such as international relations, international trade, etc., and from a professional perspective, it seemed important to me to link languages and international relations.
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In today's globalized world, bringing peoples, nations and ethnic groups together by every possible means has become essential for universal development, which cannot be achieved without taking an interest in each other's languages and cultures.


In parallel to your studies, you are very involved in the associative life of Afrinalco.

During my first year as a student at Inalco, I noticed that there were cultural activities organized by associations in the various departments, but none where the Africa department was concerned. The following year, after consultation with fellow students, we decided to create an association representing African studies, and then organized an election following which I was elected president of Afrinalco.
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As president of the Afrinalco association and with the members of the board, we accelerated things so that at last activities promoting African studies could be set up as quickly as possible. As a result, we've started organizing conferences, days (notably Africa Day, Women's Day, Solidarity Day, etc.), film screenings, events, inter-associative projects, and this year we're going to set up a club dedicated to African cinema. We also take part in activities organized by Inalco (Inal'culturelle, Journée du goût).

At Afrinalco, I'm in charge of organizing, coordinating and managing events (inviting speakers, liaising with the administration and other meetings outside Inalco). I also act as an intermediary between students and teachers, as I'm also the student representative on the Africa department board, as are the other members of the Afrinalco office. In this way, we identify the difficulties (oral practice problems, timetables, etc.) encountered by our fellow students and pass them on to the department management.

Last December, you added a new axis to your commitment to Inalco following your election to the Board of Directors.

With comrades from other departments, we put together and presented an "Osez Langues O'" list to the Board of Directors with the aim of improving and enhancing our courses and diplomas to make them more attractive and competitive. My colleagues chose me to head the list, and we were elected.

Do you have any professional activities outside Inalco?

Since September 2014, I have embarked on self-entrepreneurship by creating the website: http://www.afrilangues.fr. The idea is to offer services based on teaching African languages: translation, interpreting and language training for companies. My collaborators and I work in Bambara, Soninke, Peul, Amharic, Lingala, Wolof and Swahili, and we're continuing to develop the project to add other African languages and to look for other people to offer a maximum number of languages.

For the moment, there's only basic information on the website, but we're working on designing a new version of it to make it more professional and attractive. Although we're still in the early stages, we're delighted that the project has been so well received. We're getting more and more requests, and that's pushing us to speed things up, even if it's not easy with our studies going on at the same time.

Today, thanks to agreements signed with translation and interpreting agencies, we work with public services such as the Cour nationale du droit d'asile (CNDA), the Office français de protection des réfugiés et des apatrides (OFPRA), and production companies, as well as other public services that go directly through Afrilangues.


I also give Bambara lessons in Aubervilliers, in the 20th arrondissement of Paris and at the Centre d'animation Curial in the 19th arrondissement.

Your life is fully occupied!

Yes, that's right! I've presented here a summary of my life as a student, first from Africa, then as a foreigner in France, and I dare to assume without pretension that it's also that of most of my fellow students of identical origins, driven by the same aims and wills.

Happy New Year 2015 to you all!

 

Mr Moudiappanadin, everyone knows you very well, but, who are you?

My name is Moudiappanadin, Marie Joseph, as first names. I always have my two first names, but Joseph is my usual first name. So I'm called Joseph, but also often Moudia. Because my Tamil first name, Moudiappanadin, was very long, Moudia is its diminutive! The Tamil habit is to use the diminutive. Now Moudiappanadin is my patronymic name and Moudia (or Joseph), the name by which people call me. In my family, I was the "little one" and my brother the "big one"
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I was born in Pondicherry in 1949, when it was still a French trading post, so I was born French. I began my schooling in a village (where my father was principal) where studies were directly in Tamil, which was the language of the village. There were schools in French, but I went to a school in Tamil. Perhaps that's why I'm here at Inalco in the first place! 
After that, I went to a minor seminary, run by Catholic priests, where this time the teaching was in English. So my second language is English. Then I learned Hindi. I wasn't taught French in that seminary [sic]. I was in the Hindi section. Then, being the good nomad that I am, I went to the Lycée Français in Pondicherry, which still exists. There, I had to learn French, which I didn't know very well after all... So French came fourth! But I got on with it 
. When I got to the ninth grade in the early 1960s, I took the Brevet élémentaire de langues indiennes, the Brevet élémentaire de langue française and the BEPC, and I passed all three!

Why pass all these Brevets so early?

At the time, the Brevet élémentaire de langues indiennes (elementary diploma in Indian languages) enabled me to teach Tamil after two years at the pedagogical center. As I didn't know what the future held in store for me, I took this course and at the same time attended high school with special arrangements. I passed the elementary maths baccalaureate. And then, to my great surprise, I discovered that I had become an Indian!

Is this the backlash of the country's History?

Yes, I was no longer French. What was to become of me? Fortunately, I had my diplomas, which were in French and in particular for teaching Tamil. That was in 1966-1967. I wrote everywhere and was offered work: either as a French repetiteur at a university in Madras; or as a Tamil teacher; or to take a competitive examination to become a radio announcer, which had just opened in 1967 in Pondicherry. The first two candidates were accepted, and I was the second.

You left your studies at that point?

No, I really wanted to continue my higher education in France because my father (who had his baccalaureate) had asked me to get a license. After his death, I wanted to keep my word. So I went to see the French consul general with my books, which were very good. So he put me through a competitive examination with fifteen other people who had also lost their French nationality. [As you know, Pondicherry in 1962 reverted to the Indian Union and you had to "opt" for French nationality. My mother didn't take the necessary steps. As a result, we became an Indian family without knowing it]
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The embassy's cultural attaché organized this competition, which enabled the first five to go to France with a state scholarship for higher education. That's what prompted us to take the competition. There was a test of general knowledge, mathematics, history-geography and English (no Tamil). I came first and was awarded the French government scholarship. So for me, it was finally an opportunity to keep my word to my father. 
Your arrival in France?

The problem was knowing what degree to take; I knew nothing about studying in France, nor anyone to advise me. Looking at my school reports and the results of the competitive entrance exam, the deputy consul told me: "as you don't know anyone in France, all you have to do is draw lots for the academy and the subject". So I drew the academy of Bordeaux (I said okay! -laughs) and mathematics! In 1967, I won a four-year scholarship for a master's degree in mathematics in Bordeaux! 
I took advantage of this opportunity to apply to the Prefecture of Bordeaux to be reinstated as a French citizen. And it took four years for me to get my nationality back; the duration of the scholarship! After that, I applied for a scholarship like any other French student. In the meantime, I had come to Paris, to Paris 11 and then Paris 6, where I obtained my post-graduate doctorate in mathematics. In 1971, I started two unilingual degrees in Tamil and Hindi at Inalco, both of which I passed.

Your beginnings at Inalco?

After all these degrees, I met Professor Jean Filliozat at the Collège de France, an Indianist (Sanskrit and Tamil) who asked me a lot of questions about who I was (origin, family, etc.) and he asked me to do a job translating ancient papyri into modern Tamil. I did it with great pleasure and passion. After that, he told me that there was a position for a Tamil repetiteur at Inalco Dauphine and, at the time, you absolutely had to be from the cultural area. So he told me I was the right person for the job. But all I had in France was a unilingual diploma in Tamil, the others having been taken in India. With Mr. Filliozat's support, the Chargé d'Enseignement, Mr. Nagapattinam Kasi, received and selected me: I was installed on January 1, 1977. 

At the time, all I said was that I had my unilingual Tamil diploma. Later, Madame Fiatte, the General Secretary, demanded that I give all my diplomas. I only gave my DEA in mathematics and not the others, and she didn't insist.

Your mandates at Inalco?

I quickly discovered Dauphine, the departments and the rue de Lille. It was Mr. Sieffert, a Japanese professor, who was an administrator. Then there was M. Henri de La Bastide, then M. François de Labriole. I learned that there were elections to the Board of Directors, with four positions for College C. I was elected for the first time. I was first elected in 1983 and have been re-elected ever since, until 2011. That's how much confidence people had in me.

At the time, there was a union of assistants and répétiteurs because, as contract workers, we had no career advancement and no salary. We were doing a lot of things, but especially a lot of hours compared to the teachers. So I became a member of the union and, in 1985, I replaced Dagmar Hobzová, a Czech language teacher, as union president. We won a few battles, concerning contracts (changed from one-year to tacit renewal) and then, with Mr. Michel Perret and President F. de Labriole, we went to the Ministry to meet Georges Duhamel, the head of the Minister's cabinet, to obtain a decree on the status of répétiteurs, creating the level of language masters for three-year contracts with a higher salary. In 1998, forty-six former répétiteurs were given tenure and became university assistants, thanks to Claude Allègre and President André Bourgey. For assistants, the Ministry created the post of maître de conférences (MCF). I became one in 2002, along with two others, Ms Saraswati Joshi in Hindi and Ms Magali Reclus-Sun in Chinese. 
I was therefore able to stand for election to the Board of Directors in College B and was elected, for three terms.
 

Joseph Moudiappanadin and all the repeaters in 1998 at the status change.

Your presence on commissions - the COVE

During all these mandates, I've been a member of all the commissions. In 2003, on November 5, President Gilles Dellouche called for the CEVU to be split into a studies commission on one side and a student life commission (COVE) on the other. The teaching staff agreed that I should be on the COVE on an ever-renewing basis, and as the student body changes every year, there are new elections every year.

What excites me about this committee is being able to help students via the FSDIE (Fonds de solidarité et de développement des initiatives étudiantes). Today, students pay €16 in their registration fees. Part of this amount goes towards the annual budget of around €62,000. So it's the COVE that finances travel assistance, for language discovery, which is very important, social assistance, etc. and then the PIE (student initiative projects), which are working very well, assistance for the disabled, grants, in conjunction with the CROUS.



































I'm very pleased with the results when I see students involved in theater and culture, which is very enriching for Inalco. Since the creation of the COVE, there have been fewer problems between students and teachers. I'm aware of this because I also do mediation in this context.

Your activities outside Inalco

Publications

With other teachers from Pondicherry like me, we published pedagogical books for students (Librairie Maisonneuve), my first exercise book having been rejected at Inalco because I was only a repetiteur.

Also, one day, a lady who had heard my course in song, suggested I record Tamil songs and poems from India and Sri Lanka, translated into French, which were published by Didier Jeunesse. More recently, there was Le Livre qui parlait toutes les langues. Profits from this book went to Secours Populaire.
Stories and songs are perfect for explaining language and its subtleties, but also for understanding the world. What's important to me is that the Tamil language is disseminated among children in particular. I worked from ancient literature for the tales.
On November 1st, a bilingual edition of Le Petit Brahmane et le lion, a Tamil tale I translated, was published by L'Harmattan. It's for ages 8 and up.

It's with these and other materials that I'm working with the students here.

I also do translations for Indian newspapers...with pen names TAMIJDASSANE ("Servant of the Tamil language") or Amoudan (which is also a Tamil first name).

The abandonment of the thesis

The Tamil diaspora constituted my research work for my thesis, directed by Professor Éric Meyer, but first health problems, then political pressure from the Tamil Tigers (in a good part of my thesis, there were their interviews), prevented me from supporting it. I wanted to remove this part, but the Direction générale de la sécurité intérieure (DGSI) intervened in 2006, saying that my life was under threat. So I had to give up. At the time, my home was completely searched to find out what information I had. But I didn't have anything very important at home, I keep everything in my head, the best safe! As for the recordings, I kept them in several places.

The baccalauréat tests

In the same vein, since 1977 I've been in charge of designing the subjects and marking the Tamil language baccalaureate exams. Until 1994, there were no agreements, so I wasn't always paid. Then the inspectors in charge of the Bac appointed me to be in charge of the Tamil written tests for the Bac. 
I really think that this is a service to the practice of the Tamil language in France, and therefore to the diaspora, represented by the many associations. I like to work in this direction because, as Mahatma Gandhi said, you have to find harmony between what you say and what you do. Find that and you'll be happy.

Your extracurricular and volunteer activities

With the permission of the presidents of Inalco, I have worked for the situation of the Tamil diaspora, as a sworn interpreter-translator with social services, the appeals commission, etc. This gave me a good understanding of the problems of the diaspora. At the time, I was known as the "Rolls Royce of translators" (laughs).

I still work in the courts as a family mediator and as an ethno-clinician mediator at the Georges Devereux Center, which specializes in ethnopsychiatry. Fortunately, it's quite rare, because it involves serious family conflicts. When there are children involved, I'm particularly touched. I also continue to work as a volunteer interpreter in hospitals. When it comes to court cases, it's the judge who appoints me directly. This can sometimes take me a whole week.
Some of my students are now sworn translators and I'm very pleased with them.

The Tamil language

In France, the Tamil language is well spread by the large diaspora present in France. There are two origins, India (100,000 people) and Sri Lanka (also around 100,000). Reunion Island has a large Tamil population.

On January 11, 2015, a major Tamil festival (the Pongal) will be held, with the France Tamil Sangam association, of which I am now the assistant secretary. The aim is to spread the Tamil language among young people, either by teaching them the Tamil language, or by translating texts to make them available.

At Inalco, the Tamil language has been taught since 1868, with interruptions. There has been a succession of teachers and tutors. In 1984, Ms. Élisabeth Sethupathy became a lecturer in Tamil, then MCF in 1998, I think. My great dream would have been to see two or three Tamil posts created for the Capes exam. Mr. Jack Lang had suggested that this could be done to teach Tamil in secondary schools. Today, this is done through associations.

I think Tamil will continue to spread widely. A lot of conferences are taking place. The students had set up a theater. They've performed several times, and it's been a rich experience.

A review of your career?

I could have chosen the other path, to be an engineer and earn more money, but I stayed a repetiteur for twenty-two years at index 103. Colleagues told me it was a scandal, but I made my life here, in this family that is Inalco. Now, it's easier for répétiteurs to become MCFs, provided they can defend their thesis. But life as a repetiteur is still difficult, as are the salaries of all contract staff! It's a form of precariousness!

FORMATION AND TICE

What was your initial training?

I'm a shrink!I trained as a psycho-sociologist; I did some corporate consulting. I started with medicine and psycho in a double-course and after a degree in intercultural psychology, which may illustrate my arrival at Inalco ten years ago, I turned to organizational psychosociology and corporate consultancy. In this context, I was particularly interested in group phenomena and individual and collective strategies in a work context.
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I'm also trained as a trainer, which helps me in my work on ICTE at Inalco, where I show teachers how to use ICTE in their teaching practice. Before, in consultancy, what I was asked to do was find links and analyze them. Today, what I do in my job is to create links, between services, between people, between tools and user teachers. I'm not quite in the same dynamic anymore.

What's the link between psychology and IT, between the human and the technical tool? With technical interlocutors, computer scientists, database managers and users?

In addition to being a shrink, I'm a bit of a geek. The latest technology, the connected gadget, I'll immediately take a look! And now, the geek side and the interest in new technologies have clearly taken over. My training helps me to translate, to accompany. From human to technical and from technical to human. And to reassure sometimes.

What's your role in the midst of all the new ICTE offerings at Inalco? Your relationships with teachers?

Teachers often need an intermediary, a bridge between what they want to do and the resources made available to them. The tool, for example Moodle, must be relatively flexible and must not complicate the teacher's work, but on the contrary facilitate his interactions with students or create new ones. But it's true that sometimes these tools are not easy to get to grips with...

Let's take the case of languages with very large numbers of students: for the most basic use, they can be used to distribute course materials. When you've got a lecture hall with 400 students, it's much easier to upload your course online in PDF format than to distribute it by hand! Then it's just a short step to webography, self-correcting MCQs, videos on ad hoc sites, etc. It's up to me to show, during Moodle training courses or if some people want to set up a project that would use ICTE, the best tools for the desired use and the best way of proposing it to the student in the teaching scenario.

Today's students are accustomed to surfing the Internet, where they can find a wealth of information, but it's still the teacher who, using these same tools, will offer them relevant and well-constructed teaching resources, getting them to work, think and analyze in a controlled progression. The tool simply meets a need, and must not dominate the user, whether student or teacher.


MOODLE

The main tool you work with is the Moodle teaching platform. Can you tell us a little about it?

The Moodle (Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment) platform has been available at Inalco for a year now but it's still little used. It's a collaborative working platform with many advantages: accessible on the internet anywhere and anytime, it runs on Windows, Linux or Mac OS, it's scalable, open (free), multilingual, is supported by an active international community, is fairly easy to get to grips with and allows dynamic content to be built.
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I'm responsible for the functional side (using the tool), while Mathias Soupault is in charge of the technical side, development; he's really the one with his hands in the grease, who has, for example, made sure that Moodle is connected to our information system, the teacher/student database.

We started out with the idea that Moodle would not be imposed on teachers. The main use of Moodle at present is as a document repository, but some teachers interested in the technology are going further, towards true interactivity, by proposing, in addition to course materials, homework assignments, self-administered quizzes, thematic forums, group work, etc.
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In this way, students who are absent from class (due to distance, time constraints, etc.) or who start to drop out remain in contact with the teacher and their class. Moodle is a tool that "makes the connection" between teachers and students, but also between students. The platform brings them together and enables them to stay in touch throughout the academic year, and also to invent new ways of working together.


INALCO WEBSITE

Another activity you carry out at Inalco is the construction of the new website.

Yes, there are still a few features to be implemented or specific content such as publications. It's a very long project that's been going on for over a year and a half... ! It's both a structuring project, because in terms of the information system, it forces us to review the "cleanliness" of our databases. Often, it's the teachers who correct the information. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank them.

Over two hundred people took part in the design workshops (two or three a week at the start of the project). I'm amazed at how many of my colleagues got involved and worked on it. A website doesn't sound like much. Yet it was a major project for Inalco. The result is pretty good, the site is lively, even if there will always be things to improve. We're in the first year of operation, and it's going to get even better, both in terms of content and ergonomics.

How do those who took part in the project see the future? Do they consider it all finished?

No, our position from the outset with Sheela Rawat, the site's webmaster, has been to tell contributors that the website will be what they make of it, that the site will improve with them, thanks to them. The necessary bodies exist, notably an editorial committee, the webmaster has broad but clearly defined tasks and, in terms of functions, we now know who does what. So technically and institutionally, the framework is in place. Now, in terms of content, it will depend on the contributors. If we want the site to be visited regularly, we're going to have to bring it to life with content that's well-constructed, readable and easy to find, and news that's regularly updated. If we want it to be attractive, we'll need four-color photographs, and why not videos.

Yes, the desire is to make the website very attractive and lively. The iconography is regularly enriched thanks to Élodie Guignard, a photographer who works for Inalco. The aim is to show that life at Inalco is extremely rich, teeming.

Absolutely! It's important that we showcase the diversity of life at Inalco on the site.

What experiences have you gained from this internet project?

There are a lot of things I would have done differently, not least to shorten validation times and save myself a few sleepless nights. But the most satisfying thing is that colleagues and students seem to be happy with the site. The good feedback confirms that our needs have been fairly well covered. And it's a great recognition of the work we've all done. My initial training as a psychologist helped me with this project, particularly in recognizing the issues at stake, identifying what was behind the requests or problems that arose for us, and leading certain working groups. And the six years I spent in Continuing Education also helped, as I knew the general organization of Inalco and most of my contacts. Not knowing them would have forced me to take a different approach. In this case, I knew exactly who to contact to find the right resource people, unlike a project manager who would have come from outside.


INALCO CONTINUING TRAINING... AND THEN?

You mentioned your time at Inalco's Continuing Education, can you tell us more about it?

I was working at Paris-Dauphine University when I was informed that Inalco was looking for someone for its continuing education department. I must confess that I didn't know Inalco or Langues O'. At the time, I was also a leisure center and diving instructor, and on the day of my interview with Catherine Mathieu, I came directly from one of the centers. I burst into her office with multicolored paint on my pants, my hair a mess and... I was in! 
So I started at the Riquet center in September 2004, in the middle of a very small team. I was coordinator for evening classes, for jobseekers and then for individual à la carte courses. In this type of position, you have to maintain your contacts with companies and be able to quickly identify needs and then the person who can meet the demand. The requests are sometimes very specific and often geared towards the acquisition of a practical skill, and the teaching is not quite what is meant by "classic" or "university". We used to call on teachers in the Inalco departments, but it's important to remember that CE teachers are not necessarily the same as those in initial training.





















Ten years at Inalco, two very well-identified positions with rich developments, what's in store for you now?

My future objectives concern the evolution of ICTE at Inalco, teacher support and the use of ICTE in what we call "innovative pedagogy". At Inalco, we're starting to see the emergence of a number of hybrid training projects (half face-to-face, half distance learning) or even entirely distance learning. One such course went very well this year, in Inuktitut with Marc-Antoine Mahieu (/langue/inuktitut). And other projects are in the pipeline, such as a large MOOC around nine languages led by Luc Deheuvels or distance learning Swahili led by Odile Racine. So I'm going to refocus on that.

So we have the technical means and some positive experiences, is there a political will to use ICTE?

For a few years now, there has indeed been a strong political impetus supporting the use of ICTE, but teachers too, on personal initiatives, are driving projects. We're just the supports that help them bring them to fruition. In fact, there is a real need for this, especially in languages with small classes: with face-to-face teaching, we lose students, because this audience is highly mobile or widely dispersed, sometimes less loyal and often active elsewhere. With ICTE and distance or hybrid teaching, we can take their constraints into account while offering quality teaching.

Again, your role will be to make the link, via these hybrid training courses, with students who also take advantage of their training time to go to their country of study. In this way, we no longer "lose" them when they are geographically elsewhere.

In effect, they are no longer "disconnected", continue to follow the courses and remain linked to the class. But it can also be useful in the classroom, with students who have dropped out, especially in undergraduate courses. I'm thinking of Yoann Goudin's work in Korean: he built his own course space on Moodle, and every week he provides his students with a sound recording of his lecture, a PDF slideshow, assignments to be handed in before the next session, and answer keys. With the addition of complementary resources, his students are stimulated and motivated, communicating with each other as well as with him, and if they drop out at any point, they can catch up thanks to online content and the help of other students in the class. These uses are becoming more and more widespread, or are sometimes simply "in the pipeline" for some of our colleagues!

Getting to grips with tools like Moodle, creating content and above all reflecting on one's teaching practice is an investment that requires time, in addition to course preparation, but the results can go beyond our expectations. Now it's time to get started!



 

Mathias Ramsamy, EMICC Manager, portrait.

What was your initial training, your background before Inalco?

I did all my schooling in Alsace. After failing my baccalauréat, I worked in the hospital sector while registering as an independent candidate in order to retake the Bac exams. That same year, I also took evening classes in Japanese.

After your discovery of Japanese, is it Korean that attracts you? Why?

After graduating, I left the Alsace region to come and study Korean in Paris, at Inalco; more specifically, in Clichy. Why Korean? Simply because it's Japan's neighbor, but also because of the fluidity of the language. I discovered it through a friend during Japanese lessons and, for civilization, I learned it at Inalco and then via a Korean network.



























However, before starting my studies, I had visited Korea. For the record, after quitting my job in the hospital sector, I immediately bought plane tickets to go to Korea. I spoke neither English nor Korean. I hadn't prepared for my trip and went off on an adventure.

Before I had even touched down in the Land of the Morning Calm, I made friends with my Korean plane-mate, who immediately offered to help me. My trip was an enriching adventure, as I was able to learn a great deal about Korean culture and tradition. I repeated the experience with a 3? week stay with two Korean families. Total immersion is a rich experience.

It is indeed an adventure! Other discoveries?

Through Inalco, I've made friends from all over the world, and I thought why not take advantage of the richness of Inalco to learn a new language. So I chose Persian. It's a whole new way of looking at things and learning.

Of course, because of my Reunionese origins, I speak and understand Reunionese Creole. I'm also studying English at Inalco.

So your taste for languages wasn't born at Inalco. How did your arrival at our Institute go?

When I arrived at Inalco-Clichy, it was a bit difficult to adapt because I'd been out of school for a while. It wasn't easy to get back into a disciplined way of working. I was lucky enough to be able to do some voluntary work for the Association de la fondation étudiante pour la ville (AFEV), and then I also had odd jobs as a student in cafés, for example... It was after these various experiences that I had the opportunity to work as a temporary administrative assistant at the Direction des Etudes for enrolments, and then I was offered a position as a pedagogical secretary for the South-East Asia, South Asia, Pacific and Upper Asia department in parallel with my studies. And here I am now, working as an EMICC assistant and communications officer for Inalco's International Relations department.

What are your responsibilities within the EMICC Master's program?

I'm in charge of setting up the European Intercultural Training Master, the EMICC, which is hosted at Inalco this year. I manage the logistics of the program: organizing meetings, welcoming students and teachers, etc.
. I'm also in charge of communications for international relations, distributing emails to students, organizing delegations, and I back up my colleague Stéphane Londéro for administrative and pedagogical registrations for international and foreign students ERASMUS.

How do you manage to keep up with your studies and your professional life simultaneously? Do you also add other activities inside or outside Inalco?

Unfortunately or fortunately, I have a very full and busy life. In addition to my double degree and my work at Inalco, I of course have other activities. With a friend, we set ourselves the challenge of running the Paris half-marathon in 2015!

I've long been involved in associative life at Inalco, notably, when O'Korea was created in 2012 by students in the Korean section. The aim of this association is to promote Korean culture and traditions through various activities and events organized by our partners or by the association itself.

In November 2012, I worked on the Asian Passion festival at the request of Magali Godin (in charge, among other things, of Inalco's cultural actions at the direction de la communication), a festival which lasted five very intense days.

I also worked twice in the continuing education department for the JLPT and in the China department for the Le Pont de la Chine event. In addition, I participated in the preparation of the 2012 Journée Inalculturelle when there was Romane Riou, in service civique de Sorbonne Paris Cité, with other Inalco associations during cultural days as well as the Danse du monde show that the Bureau des Étudiants de l'Inalco organizes every year.
 

Michael Lucken, winner of the 2014 Thiers Prize from the Académie Française

Michael Lucken, historian of Japan, professor at the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (Paris), during his lecture at UNIGE on May 6, 2014.

What was your initial training, your background before Inalco?

After graduating from high school in 1986, I didn't want to become a teacher like my parents. I wanted to work in the contemporary art market. I went to a private school of cultural management, and at the same time started buying works from young artists, doing a bit of brokerage, and doing internships with auctioneers.

How did you discover the Japanese language and culture?

In 1988, I started learning Japanese in evening classes at Inalco (Dauphine). Some of my teachers became my colleagues. In 1992, after a year's military service, I went to Japan on a Japanese government scholarship to research the painter Kishida Ryūsei (1891-1929) in the art history department of Waseda University. In Tōkyō, I continued to frequent the world of galleries, artists' studios and the art market, but I also developed a taste for writing and intellectual reflection.

On my return to France, I decided to devote myself to teaching and research. From 1994 to 1998, I worked in the Paris office of the Japan Foundation, helping to launch the Maison de la culture du Japon in Paris. In 1999, I defended a thesis on Japanese art policy during the Second World War under the supervision of Jean-Jacques Origas.

What year did you join Inalco as a teacher? What was your subsequent career path?

I started teaching at Inalco in 1998 as an ATER. I was appointed MCF in 2000, then PU in 2006. I refer you to my personal file on the Inalco website for my current responsibilities and main publications.

As a researcher, what are your areas of research? What is the focus of your research work?

Although I'm part of the first generation to have grown up with Japanese cartoons, I didn't start studying the Japanese language out of passion. The passion came as a second step with learning the language, getting to know the country and its culture. This is perhaps why I define myself today as a historian of similarities and convergences, which doesn't mean that I deny differences, but that I refuse to posit them a priori. Generally speaking, I am part of a movement that aims to make extra-Western realities ordinary objects of knowledge.

My artistic training gave me a taste for objects. This is the source of my interest in period sources and old documents, particularly those from the Second World War, whose content I analyze, but also their form and reception. I've also always read a lot, especially books on philosophy and poetry.

Hence your recently awarded book Les Japonais et la guerre...

My various works on the cultural history of Japan at war have led me to describe phenomena very similar to those found in Europe and the United States, particularly in terms of organization and values. In Les Japonais et la guerre 1937-1952 (Fayard), for which I received the 2014 Thiers Prize*, I show, for example, the importance of the Romantic movement and ideas in Japanese warmongering. A study of this period of crisis, whose major episodes everyone knows, starting with the kamikaze operations and atomic bombings, reveals that Japanese modernity is a modernity in its own right and that the choices made by the Japanese are far from incomprehensible, contrary to what has long been written.

The other main thrust of my thinking is both aesthetic and political. It's about understanding how Japan - and through Japan, non-Western countries in general - has adapted to the modern system that values creation and rejects imitation. Japanese art, while accepting the idea of progress and innovation, constantly seeks mimetic devices to subvert this logic. Paradoxically, however, it finds in this very reaction the ferment of its dynamism. This is something for a country like France to ponder.


*The Prix Thiers is a history prize awarded annually by the Académie Française. This is the first time it has been awarded to a work on a non-Western subject.


Prix de l'Académie française 2014 - Thiers Prize for Les Japonais et la guerre (1937-1952), Paris, Fayard, Collection: Divers Histoire, 400 pages, ISBN-13: 978-2213661414.

First and back covers of Michael Lucken's book, The Japanese and the War (1937-1952), Paris, Fayard, Collection : Divers Histoire, 400 pages, ISBN-13: 978-2213661414.

Clotilde Trouvé, historical touch above all

What was your initial training?

I didn't always want to be an archivist; until I was 20, I simply wanted to study history, literature, ancient languages (Latin, Greek): a nice cocktail sprinkled with a little philosophy, but not too much. The professional world was just around the corner, and here I was, filing photographs at the departmental archives and running around archive stores bringing registers to impatient readers. What impressed me most was the right to touch the archives. Up until then, I'd seen archives and manuscripts at exhibitions that were well protected in their glass cases. In the storeroom, everything was directly accessible, with a very particular and endearing smell. My choice was made: I was going to be an archivist; it couldn't have been simpler: a course at university culminating in a professional Master 2 in "archive professions".

A avant Inalco?

When I left university, I was hired straight away. In fact, the school where I had completed part of my internship offered to implement the archiving recommendations and procedures I had developed during this period. This school, La Fémis, trains students in the film industry (directors, producers, scriptwriters, image, sound, editing); in short, I did my first job in a cultural and youthful environment, which enabled me to make a smooth transition from student to professional. One of my activities during those three months was filing the files of IDHEC and La Fémis students: having in my hands the various cinematographic works of a certain Costa-Gavras or François Ozon, was the reward for a week spent in a windowless room in the -2Bas of the building. I still have vivid memories of this early stage of my career.

At the beginning of 2010, I moved to the central administration of the French Ministry of Culture. After the audit, it turned out that the staff hadn't archived for 20 years! My mission was to make people aware that they had to archive, and not just in any old way. My best way of doing this was to get involved with them. After a week during which I patiently went to the various departments to ask them where they stood, the press modernization fund department asked me to come and help them... These were the application files for press houses eligible for public funding under the press modernization scheme, the volume: 3 full cupboards. In one afternoon, everything was packed into boxes, catalogued, inventoried, labeled and the cupboards emptied.
. 
Word spreads like magic: "actually, archiving doesn't take too long, and how much space does it free up...". The wheels are in motion. In short, the archivist is the person who makes space and has access to secret places (there was a tiny office that no one entered, as it was filled with archives from a department that no longer existed, so I was the only person authorized to enter it).

Why Inalco?

After a quick stint at the Ecole Militaire, I find myself the "archivist" at Inalco. For me, Inalco has enabled me to immerse myself in a cultural universe that produces and disseminates a wide range of knowledge and heritage. At Inalco, I could be called the "Miss Box": I'm seen in the corridors with a cart full of boxes, I'm asked for green boxes, often white boxes for exam papers, and sometimes brown boxes. Or the "Miss Brick", after the little name given to the publication featuring archival documents.

But in concrete terms, between the archival box and the bricks, there's a whole lot of filing, storage space management and research work that often takes place in the shadows of rue de Lille or in the reading room of the Archives nationales.

Why are you involved at Inalco?

When I arrived at Inalco, the major project was the physical regrouping of services at the Pôle des langues et civilisations. I understood that this was a moment that generations of teachers, administrators and students had been longing for since 1968; and I was able to experience this "historic" moment; my archivist's heart leapt and I immediately signed up.

Your involvement in the life of the school?

For the past few months, I've been running a sewing workshop for the Inalc/API staff association. It's been a very rewarding experience, because all the people taking part are motivated, resourceful and, above all, have lots of sewing ideas that I find brilliant. My next project: a sewing workshop for men!!!