Marie Anne Polo de Beaulieu

Marie Anne Polo de Beaulieu is a CNRS Research Director at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS), affiliated with the Center for Historical Research (CRH) and the Historical Anthropology of the Long Middle Ages (AHLOMA) team. A former student of École normale supérieure and agrégée in history, she specializes in medieval exempla, liturgical innovation, and the memory of the deceased, with a focus on narrative sources and religious practices.

• Doctorate (1984, EHESS) on Jean Gobi the Younger’s Scala coeli, supervised by Jacques Le Goff.
• Habilitation (2001, University of Paris I) on Preaching, norms, social practices, supervised by Claude Gauvard and Jean-Claude Schmitt.

Her research explores how medieval exempla functioned in “making belief” and their role in liturgical and narrative expressions of death. She co-created the Thesaurus Exemplorum Medii Aevi database and has led editorial projects like the Exempla Medii Aevi collection. Recent work (2025) extends to visual exempla in Russian contexts and animal metaphors in medieval utopian models.

She has held leadership roles, including directing the merged AHLOMA research group (since 2017), serving on the EHESS Board of Directors (2012-2016, 2018-2020), and contributing to networks like Menestrel and MSS. Awards include her 2012-2016 CNRS (section 32) membership and 2005-2006 Princeton Institute for Advanced Study affiliation.