the author

ORCID: 0000-0002-5793-1098
Hal archives ouvertes: http://cv.archives-ouvertes.fr/Battesti
Scholar: https://scholar.google.fr/citations...

Vincent Battesti is an anthropologist and researcher at the CNRS since 2009 (appointed CR1), working within the UMR 7206 Écoanthropologie unit, based at the Musée de l’Homme in Paris, part of the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle. Before joining the CNRS, he pursued a career as an independent and contractual researcher, notably as a temporary lecturer and research assistant at the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle in Paris. From 2002 to 2006, he was posted at the CEDEJ (Center for Economic, Legal, and Social Studies and Documentation) in Cairo. Subsequently, he spent six years as a Visiting Scholar in New York, first at the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies at New York University, and then at the Department of Anthropology at Columbia University.

His anthropological research focuses primarily on North Africa (Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco) and the Middle East (Egypt, Yemen, Sudan, Saudi Arabia), and, more recently, on Corsica. Initially trained in biology (terrestrial ecology) at the Faculty of Science of the University of Montpellier (1992), he also holds a PhD in social anthropology from the University of Paris V – Sorbonne (1998), where he developed a socio-ecological approach to Saharan oases. In 2021, he defended his HDR in social anthropology at the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle. (The HDR (Habilitation à diriger des recherches) is France’s highest academic qualification, certifying expertise and the ability to independently supervise doctoral research.)

His work is structured around several major research axes:

• Environmental anthropology and ethnoecology of oases, notably in the Siwa Oasis (Egypt) and the al-‘Ulā Oasis (Saudi Arabia);
• Historical and social analysis of Egyptian gardens;
• Anthropology of public spaces, particularly in Cairo and Khartoum, studied notably through the lens of soundscapes;
• Anthropology of sensory perceptions;
• Ethnoecology of the Castagniccia region in Corsica.

Furthermore, he works closely with evolutionary biologists in an interdisciplinary approach, using plant models such as the date palm and the chestnut tree.

Vincent Battesti is the author or co-editor of numerous scientific publications, including Gardens in the desert, Evolution of oasis practices and knowledge, Jerid, Tunisia (2005, IRD Editions), Today’s Egypt: Inventory of a Society Prior to Revolution (2011, Actes Sud/Sindbad), and Learning the senses, learning through the senses: Anthropology of sensory perceptions (2023, Pétra Editions). He has also coordinated several journal issues, including a special edition of the Revue d’ethnoécologie titled The Date Palm: Origin and Cultivation in the Middle East and in Egypt (2013/2014).

Today, he divides his time between Paris at the Musée de l’Homme and his fieldwork in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Corsica.