Doctor in Egyptology and linguistics, director of the French archaeological mission of Sedeinga (SEDAU), co-editor of the Meroitic Newsletters, member of board of the International Society for Nubian Studies, of the Sudan Archaeological Research Society, of the Sudan Archaeology Society (Khartoum), he is currently a research fellow at the CNRS and director of the SFDAS.
He is regarded as one of the world’s specialists in Meroitic language and writing on which he wrote his PhD thesis at the EPHE (a higher education institution of training and research in humanities and social sciences). His research fields concern African linguistics, historical linguistics, Meroitic studies and North Eastern Sudanic languages in a comparative approach.
2010 “L’écriture et la langue de Méroé”, exhibition catalogue, Meroé, Un empire sur le Nil, Paris.
2010 Le méroïtique et sa famille linguistique, collection Afrique et langage n°14, Paris, Peeters.
2008 “Enemy Brothers, Kinship and relationship between Meroites and Nubians (Noba)”, Between the Cataracts. Polish Archaelogy in the Mediterranean, Supplement Series, p. 211-225.
2008 “The linguistic position of Meroitic. New perspectives for understanding the texts”, Sudan & Nubia 12, p. 2-12.
2008 “Les textes méroïtiques de l’île de Saï”, Kush 19, Khartoum, p. 139-177.
2008 “Royal and Private Devotion to Amun of Napata. Two meroitic graffiti recently discovered in Jebel Suweigat”, with Abdel Rahman Ali Mohamed, Kush 19, Khartoum, p. 127-137.
2007 La langue du royaume de Méroé. Un panorama de la plus ancienne culture écrite d’Afrique subsaharienne, Honoré Champion, Paris.
2007 “Le nom de Saï et ses occurrences dans les textes méroïtiques”, in Mélanges Francis Geus, CRIPEL 26, université Charles de Gaulle - Lille III, p. 303-312.
Kerma and Meroe. Five lectures on Sudanese archaeology (2005) was a best seller in Khartoum. It was edited as a collaboration between the French Section of the Direction of Antiquities of Sudan (SFDAS) and the French Cultural Centre Frédéric Cailliaud in Khartoum and sponsored by the Cooperation and Cultural Service of the French Embassy.
This lecture was delivered in ECAS 2009 (3rd European Conference on African Studies, Panel 142: African waters - water in Africa, barriers, paths, and resources: their impact on language, literature and history of people) in Leipzig, 4 to 7 June 2009.