JOULIAN Fréderic

Quick Bio-Biblio

Frédéric Joulian is an anthropologist. Assistant professor at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales, he was deputy director of the Social Anthropology Laboratory at the Collège de France and head of the interdisciplinary program Evolution, Natures and Cultures at the EHESS until 2011. He directed the interdisciplinary journal Techniques&culture from 2006 to 2016. His research focuses on evolutionary processes and the meanings of technical and cultural phenomena over time and on human-animal interactions in Africa and Europe. His main publications include : La Nature est-elle culturelle? Éditions Errance (1998), Les Natures de l’Homme, with S. de Cheveigné (2007), Dire le Savoir-Faire with S. d’Onofrio (2008), Anthologie raisonnée de Techniques&culture with G. Bartholeyns and N. Govoroff (2010), Geste et Matière (2011). He coordinated with Y.-P. Tastevin and the MuCEM the edition of a collective work on the question of the remainder and waste, entitled « Fixing the World, Excess, Remainder and Innovation » (2016) and « The Instrumental Body » with G. Bartholeyns in 2017. He is now devoting himself to a personal work tracing all of his work in Africa: « From the origins of culture: Men and Chimpanzees in Perspective » and to an editorial project « Anthropographiks » associating Human sciences and Manga which gave rise in 2021 to an exhibition Washi, from Mulburry to Manga, the art of paper in Japan, in partnership with Seika University and to a book on the arts of learning and transmission Waza, the inefable art of learning, with A. Takada, X. Tian and M. Shimada (2021) Kyoto Univ, Seika Univ. and the RIHN. From 2016 to 2019 he was strongly involved in the politics of the City of Hyères both on an ecological and cultural project and locally organized the great national debate on the ecological and social dimensions. He joined the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature as an expert on research issues related to sustainable development. He is involved in both fundamental research issues and the place of researcher in the city. In 2022 he also coordinated the collective editorial project on rituals « Mécaniques rituelles » avec S. Galliot et P. Lemonnier and continued to write on the intelligence of chimpanzees and prehumans.

Distinction :

Prix d’éthologie et d’anthropologie culturelle 2005, Fondation Jean-Marie Delwart. Académie Royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique.

Formation universitaire

1993 Thèse de doctorat : « Application de l’éthologie des chimpanzés Ouest-africains au comportement des hominidés du Plio-pléistocène : le problème de la culture. » (dir. J. Chavaillon ; jury : Y. Coppens, A. Coudart, C-M. Hladik), Univ. Paris I – Panthéon Sorbonne, 700 p.

1986 Diplôme d’Etudes Approfondies de Préhistoire, Ethnologie, Anthropologie. Option « Anthropologie Biologique, Morphologie, Evolution ». Mémoire :« Pan faber », bibliographie sélective à propos des évidences d’outils chez les singes supérieurs : problématiques anthropologiques ». (dir. J. Chavaillon). Univ. Paris I – Panthéon Sorbonne.