Dear Reader,
the 67th Annual Meeting of the PIAC was held in Gotemba, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan, from August 26 to 30, 2025. Held for the second time only in Japan, It was a very successful meeting with 51 participants, among them many young first-time participants.
The report of the Meeting is now online.
Oliver Corff
Secretary General
September 02, 2025
Typhaine Cann (1986–2025)
It was with profound shock and sorrow that we learned of the death of the exceptionally talented young French Mongolist and Cultural anthropologist, Typhaine Cann, who passed away on June 7, 2025. This devastating news is difficult to grasp; in our grief, we join Typhaine’s family, friends, and colleagues in mourning her loss.
Born in 1986 in Brest, a coastal city on France’s western edge, Typhaine devoted her studies to the exploration of cultures in their many dimensions. Alongside her work in anthropology, she pursued studies in political science (Institute of Political Sciences, Lille) and social sciences (UBO / Lycée de Kérichen, Brest).
Her first encounter with Mongolia came in 2005, when she began working as an intern at the French Embassy in Ulaanbaatar. This experience, renewed over several years, marked the beginning of a lifelong dedication to Mongolian culture and history.
Typhaine earned her master’s degree in 2009 and her first PhD in cultural anthropology in 2014 at the University of Western Brittany (UBO), Brest. Her dissertation, L’invention du paysage culturel sous-marin: le traitement en patrimoine des épaves de la Mer d’Iroise et ses ambiguïtés (link), examined how scuba divers engaged in preserving underwater cultural heritage appropriate and reinvent history – both collective and personal memory – through their practices. Her city of Brest, occupied by the German Navy for four years and later destroyed by Allied bombardments, provided a poignant context for her research on the weight of memory. In 2016, her dissertation was published as the monograph Secrets d’épaves, plongeurs, archéologues, collectionneurs (Presses universitaires de Rennes, link).
From 2014, Typhaine worked as a Research Associate at the University of Western Brittany, teaching courses on Anthropology and patrimonialisation, Material civilisation, Tourism and identity, Introduction to anthropology, and Maritime anthropology. Beginning in 2015, she conducted extensive fieldwork in Mongolia, often for several months each year, in association with the Academy of Sciences, Department of History and Archaeology, focusing especially on Zuungov’ province. Alongside her scholarly pursuits, she also served as an official interpreter of Mongolian for French courts.
It was the late Alexander Vovin who first drew my attention to Typhaine, and after our initial exchanges, I was honored to become the supervisor of her second PhD, this time in Mongolian studies. After long preparations, she began her doctoral training at the University of Szeged. This period of collaboration proved extraordinarily fruitful, thanks to her tireless energy and intellectual curiosity. Despite the disruptions of the covid pandemic, Typhaine relocated to Ulaanbaatar to gather crucial material for her dissertation. In 2021, she presented on site at PIAC’s only hybrid session in Ulaanbaatar, delivering her paper The invention of the national hero in socialist Mongolia: Magsarzhav, Sükhbaatar, Choibalsan.
Her stamina and dedication were remarkable. While completing and defending her second doctoral dissertation at the University of Szeged – Heroes, exemplars and mediators. The concept of patriotism in the Mongolian historical novel of the socialist era (link) – she simultaneously undertook the monumental task of translating one of Mongolia’s literary classics, Chadraabalyn Lodoidamba’s Tungalag Tamir, published in 2024 as La Tamir aux eaux limpides (Transboréal, link). This translation represented a major contribution to the dissemination of Mongolian literature in Europe, extending its reach well beyond a specialist readership.
Following her successful defense, Typhaine immediately began translating Byambyn Rinchen’s novel Üüriin Tuyaa. She was full of plans for the future: her next academic ambition was to pursue the Doctor of Science degree at the Mongolian Academy of Sciences. Yet time was too short, and this extraordinary path was cut short by her untimely passing in the country she had chosen as her second homeland.
For those of us who knew her, her death leaves an irreplaceable void.
Dear Teegii, Бурхны оронд тайван нойрсдоо!
Ákos Bertalan Apatóczky
August 30, 2025
Dear Reader,
It is the editor’s distinguished pleasure to announce that a new edition of the VIIIth volume of The Collected Works by Prof. Hidehiro Okada is now available. Published by Fujiwara-shoten (ISBN: 978-4-86578-469-5) in Japan and ready for immediate release, this volume is in great part dedicated to the PIAC. Its title reads (in Japanese and English): Sixty Years in Eurasian Studies of the World. The title illustration shows the original PIAC medal (Indiana University Prize for Altaic Studies) which Prof. Okada was awarded in 1999. Prof. Okada was also the President of the 38th Annual Meeting held in Kawasaki, Japan, in 1995.
The revised and enlarged edition contains added materials, notably with reference to the PIAC.
Oliver Corff
— Secretary General —
August 30, 2025
Oliver Corff, July 27, 2025
In Memoriam
Michael Weiers
(December 26, 1937 — July 17, 2025)
Michael Weiers was born in Bernried am Starnberger See, in one of the most beautiful landscapes of Bavaria, on the second day of Christmas of the year 1937. His grammar school years (the proper German term is Gymnasium) offered him a broad exposure to the world of classical languages as Greek and Latin were a mandatory part of the grammar school curriculum.
This exposure to the intellectual heritage of Europe is a core objective of the idea of humanism, a worldview the foundations of which are rooted in Classical antiquity.
It must have been this education in combination with the proximity of Bavaria to Italy (by far not only in the sense of geography, but also determined by those immaterial sentiments of life [“Lebensgefühl”, as the Germans would say] as reflected in Baroque decorative arts and religious life) that made the young Michael Weiers explore Italy during his university years. From 1958 onwards, he did not only attend university in Munich and (later) Bonn, but also spent years in Rome and Naples.
The subjects he studied truly reflected both the spirit of Renaissance Man, or, equally true, the ideals of the late 19th century idea of a linguist and philologist commanding a vast array of languages. He took courses in Semitic studies, followed by Manju, Mongolian, Chinese and Tibetan studies, and he broadened his horizon by taking classes in Turkology, Islamic studies, Central Asian studies in Language and Culture, as well as Comparative Religious studies. Throughout his academic life, his most productive focus was centered in the fields of Manju and Mongolian studies, assisted and supported by all the other fields he was interested in during his formative years at university.
During his university years (and later on), he had the privilege to attend classes held by the most prominent authorities in their respective fields. His curriculum vitae lists, among others, Herbert Franke, Helmut Hoffmann, Joachim Kissling, Giuseppe Tucci, Luciano Petech, Francesco Gabrieli, Alessio Bombaci and Walther Heissig, many of whom were later to become prominent contributors to the Permanent International Altaistic Conference (PIAC), or, in the case of Walther Heissig, one of the founding fathers of the PIAC.
In his scholarly work, Michael Weiers had a strong interest in the rule-based foundations of language in general, and their many expressions in linguistic and philological practice. His Ph.D. dissertation in 1965 on the historical grammar of preclassical Mongolian was considered outstanding (Latin: egregie) and was honoured with the Prize of the Association of Friends of the University of Bonn (short in German: “Geffrub-Preis”). He rose through the ranks of the University of Bonn which would become his life-long intellectual home base from where he undertook numerous expeditions. To name just one example, he conducted field work among the Moghol in Herat, Afghanistan (1969–1972); basis of an authoritative monograph and series of papers which qualified him for the post of professor in 1972. He would hold this status until his retirement in 2003.
One field in which he made singular contributions was the study and research of the so-called Old Manju Archive Materials, or Jiu Manzhou Dang 舊滿洲檔 being the precursor to—and sometimes erroneously taken for—the more widely known Manwen Laodang. He was the only European scholar working on this subject which traditionally was considered a Chinese and Japanese domain. His field work in Taiwan in 1971 brought a rich harvest of Manju and Mongolian materials, source for many of his later papers.
In his publications (his bibliography lists approximately 350 titles, the last one published recently, in 2022), he covered a number of fields. The languages of the Mongolian language family were but one of his fields of interest. He also was either editor or co-editor of journals like Zentralasiatische Studien or series like Aetas Manjurica, to name just two examples. Besides his scholarly work, he had a keen interest in disseminating the knowledge of his field to broader audiences. He contributed at least a dozen or more articles to the Brockhaus Enzyklopädie, a flagship of German encyclopediae with roots in the Age of Enlightenment. Yet, the encyclopedia as such was not only a means of disseminating knowledge, it was also subject of his research he conducted on the lexicology and lexicography of Mongolian and Manju. It is no wonder at all that he also contributed the article on “Mongolian Lexicography” in Wörterbücher. Ein internationales Handbuch zur Lexikographie (Dictionaries. An International Encyclopedia of Lexicography).
Michael Weiers attended three Meetings of the PIAC, in 1974, 1977 and 1984.
One of his closest colleagues broke the news of Michael Weiers’ departure to the author of these lines with the words “the ranks are thinning out”. True this is, and deeply saddening as well. The community of Altaic scholars mourns the loss of an outstanding peer.
Oliver Corff
Secretary General
July 20th, 2025
Dear Reader,
the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Permanent International Altaistic Conference (PIAC) was held in Strebersdorf, near Vienna (Austria), in 1980. One Japanese scholar, Ikegami Jirō, who at that time already could look back on a history of more than 20 years since his first participation in a PIAC meeting, wrote a detailed report about this Meeting. His report is especially valuable in light of the many changes that took place during the Meeting, and which are not visible from the original programme. By the way, another 20 years later, Ikegami Jirō was awarded the Indiana University Prize for Altaic Studies, colloquially known as the PIAC Medal, in 2002.
Oliver Corff
Secretary General
July 5, 2025.
The journal Études mongoles et sibériennes, centre-asiatiques et tibétaines (EMSCAT) and the Société des études mongoles et sibériennes are deeply saddened to announce the passing of Roberte Hamayon (Nicole Devaux in civilian life), on March 18, 2025.
An anthropologist and linguist, founder of Mongolian studies in France, of the “Centre d’études mongoles et sibériennes” (CEMS) and of our journal (originally titled Études mongoles at its inception in 1970, renamed Études mongoles et sibériennes in 1981, and then EMSCAT in 2006), director of studies at the École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE), an internationally recognized theorist of shamanism and play, Roberte Hamayon transformed the landscape of studies on Northern Asia in France and around the world. Her decisive contribution to understanding the mechanisms of belief, the uses of metaphor, and the ritual life of Mongolian and Siberian populations made her one of the great French anthropologists of our time.
***
Born in 1939 in Paris, Roberte Hamayon attended Évelyne Lot-Falck’s seminars at the EPHE from 1963, right after the creation of the Chair of Religions of Northern Eurasia and the Arctic that same year, upon Claude Lévi-Strauss’s initiative. After training in ethnology and linguistics and acquiring a strong command of Russian, she took the opportunity of the establishment of diplomatic relations between France and the People’s Republic of Mongolia in 1965 and the signing of an exchange protocol between the CNRS and the Mongolian Academy of Sciences to undertake her first research trip to Mongolia. Alongside Françoise Aubin (1932-2017), she was the first researcher from a “capitalist” country to visit the National University of Ulaanbaatar in 1967. She would return numerous times throughout the 1970s, as well as to the Soviet Union to work with Buryat populations.
Back from her first ethnographic fieldwork in the fall of 1967, she established a Mongolian language and culture program at the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO, then known as the École nationale des langues orientales vivantes) in Paris, where she taught until 1973, when Jacques Legrand succeeded her.
After an initial position at the Musée de l’Homme as a librarian in 1960, she was recruited by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) as a technical collaborator in 1963, then as a researcher in 1965. In 1968, she joined the Laboratoire d’Ethnologie et de Sociologie Comparative (LESC) at the University of Paris X Nanterre, founded the previous year by Éric de Dampierre. With his active support, she established the Centre d’études mongoles in 1969 (which became the Centre d’études mongoles et sibériennes in 1976) and founded the annual journal Études Mongoles the following year (renamed Études mongoles et sibériennes in 1976, and later Études mongoles & sibériennes, centrasiatiques & tibétaines in 2004).
In 1974, she was elected director of studies at the EPHE, succeeding Évelyne Lot-Falck in the Chair of Religions of Northern Asia, which she held until her retirement in 2007 (the chair, renamed Chair of the Anthropology of religions, is now held by Grégory Delaplace). During her years at the EPHE, while maintaining strong ties with the University of Paris X and the LESC, where she served as director from 1988 to 1994, she trained a new generation of researchers specializing in Mongolia and Siberia, who contributed alongside her to the development of the field.
Leaving the LESC in 2002, Roberte Hamayon joined the GEODE (now Sophiapol, EA 3932), before settling at the Groupe Sociétés, Religions, Laïcités (GSRL, UMR 8582) in 2004 and until her retirement. In 2002, the CEMS documentary collection was transferred from Nanterre to the EPHE before being integrated into the Grand Équipement Documentaire of the Humathèque. The EMSCAT journal, institutionally affiliated with the EPHE, is now published by the Société des études mongoles et sibériennes (SEMS), which Roberte Hamayon founded in 2013.
While her work was deeply rooted in North Asian ethnography, Roberte Hamayon’s influence extended far beyond the Siberian-Mongolian region. Her thought inspired anthropologists specializing in various cultural areas, as well as sociologists, historians, and philosophers in France, Canada, Japan, and beyond. She gained international recognition with the publication of her major work, La Chasse à l’âme. Esquisse d’une théorie du chamanisme sibérien (Société d’ethnologie, Nanterre, 1990), which established her as a key theorist of religions. The publication, 22 years later, of Jouer. Une étude anthropologique (Paris, La Découverte, 2012, translated in 2016 as Why We Play. An Anthropological Study, Chicago, Hau Books), exploring the power of metaphor and proposing play as a mode of action, further refined her decisive contributions to early 21st century social and cultural anthropology. Roberte Hamayon also made significant contributions to ethnolinguistics, notably with the publication of Éléments de grammaire mongole, co-authored with Marie-Lise Beffa (Paris, Dunod, 1975).
In 2006, she was awarded the CNRS Silver Medal in recognition of her entire career. The Mongolian state honoured her with the Medal of Friendship (Nairamdal, in 2005) and later with the Order of the Polar Star (Altan Gadas, in 2016), the highest distinction awarded to a foreigner. In 2016, she received the Onon Prize from the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit at the University of Cambridge for her contributions to Mongolian studies. In 2020, she was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Fribourg (Switzerland).
A first tribute volume was gifted to her upon her retirement, edited by Katia Buffetrille, Jean-Luc Lambert, Nathalie Luca, and Anne de Sales: D’une anthropologie du chamanisme vers une anthropologie du croire (EMSCAT, Special Issue, 2013), followed in 2023 by a special issue of Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie dedicated to the importance of her thought for religious studies in the Chinese world (vol. 30, 2021). The number and diversity of contributions in these two volumes reflect the vast intellectual legacy she leaves behind.
Beyond her exceptional scientific legacy, those who became her students and colleagues, both French and international, remember above all her dedication to students, her constant availability, her optimism, and her kindness. We have lost a mentor, a role model, and a friend, but we will continue for many years to come to harvest the fruits of what she had sown.
[Reproduced with permission by EMSCAT, March 31, 2025]
Dear Reader,
The end of the Cold War is not even an event of the recent past anymore as it is already one generation away. With increasing distance, the memory of this time either fades away or, for the younger members of the PIAC family, is not even accessible by personal experience anymore. Until recently, the general perception was that travel, exchange, exploration and scholarly field work had reached a new and hitherto unseen level of openness and ease. Yet, the PIAC was born during the Cold War and had to negotiate her path during the first 30-odd years of her history.
In sight of new geopolitical rivalries and tensions it must be thoroughly understood that the comparative ease and freedom of exchange and movement wo could enjoy during the last three decades is fragile rather than robust and should not be taken for granted and carved in stone. Quite to the contrary, it is necessary to understand the historical background of the PIAC in order to be able to appreciate the scholarly exchanges the PIAC managed to conduct in the first half of her history.
in May 2024, our colleague Kinga Szálkai published an interesting article on these issues of the history of the PIAC, focussing of the environment of and opportunities for scholarly exchange and work during the Cold War. The article is part of the The Palgrave Handbook of Non-State Actors in East-West Relations, the full citation is:
Szálkai, K. (2024). The Permanent International Altaistic Conference. In: Marton, P., Thomasen, G., Békés, C., Rácz, A. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Non-State Actors in East-West Relations. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05750-2_81-1.
The abstract of the paper is available under the DOI stated in the citation.
Oliver Corff
Secretary General
July 19, 2024
Dear Reader,
The editor continues to negotiate his path through a huge treasure trove of PIAC documents: books of abstracts, lists of participants, and programmes of previous PIAC Meetings. If these materials contain many hand-written notes or are typeset by typewriter which was typically the case until the 1990s, they have to be copied manually. Thus, it is understandable that this is a time-consuming process. On the other hand, the editor does not process the materials in a linear, time-sequential fashion but his choices are rather prompted by a multitude of factors, curiosity not being the least among them.
That is why the List of Participants and Titles of Communications of the 37th Annual Meeting of the PIAC, held in Chantilly, France, in 1994, is available only now.
Oliver Corff
Secretary General
July 2024
Dear Reader,
the 66th Annual Meeting of the PIAC was held in Göttingen from June 30 to July 5, 2024. Held for the eleventh time in Germany, It was a very successful meeting as it saw the number of participants (from 15 countries) return to pre-Covid levels (57 participants joined the Meeting), among them many young participants.
The report of the Meeting is now online.
Oliver Corff
Secretary General
July 08, 2024