معرفی
Olivier Tessier serves as a Lecturer at the French School of the Far East (EFEO), specializing in the Anthropology of Vietnam. Since September 2015, he has been responsible for the EFEO center in Ho Chi Minh City, which was established in 2012, and was initially recruited as a lecturer at EFEO in September 2006.
His educational qualifications include:
- Doctor of Anthropology from the Academy of Aix-Marseille, University of Provence (Aix-Marseille I), December 2003, with thesis titled "The native country is a sweet star fruit": Social anchoring and spatial mobility: an attempt to define a local social space in northern Vietnam
- Engineer in Agronomic Techniques for Hot Regions, specializing in Social Water Management, from the National Center for Agronomic Studies in Hot Regions (CNEARC), Montpellier (1991-1993)
Prior to his academic career, Tessier worked for four years as a development program manager in Burkina Faso and Haiti. His anthropological research challenges conventional understandings of Vietnamese rural space, demonstrating how populations are more mobile and interconnected than traditionally portrayed as static village units. He examines the evolution of State-peasant community relationships from the 12th to 20th centuries through the lens of water management and hydraulics, investigating how large-scale hydraulic systems in the Red River and Mekong deltas shaped social, political and economic control.
As director of the EFEO center in Ho Chi Minh City, Tessier has coordinated significant research initiatives including the "Local Governance - Phuoc Hoa Water Resources Management Project" (2015-2019) and currently participates in the GEMMES project on economic impacts of climate change in Vietnam. He previously managed the EFEO-Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences archaeological cooperation program (2006-2010), coordinating the development of the permanent exhibition "Thăng Long - Hà Nội, a thousand years of buried history" at the ancient imperial city site.
Tessier has also initiated a program publishing six reference works in Vietnamese (2017-2021) and leads a monthly conference series with sixteen events held between 2018-2021. His work combines historical archival research, particularly on 19th century Hanoi citadel history, with contemporary studies of water resource management and climate change adaptation strategies in Vietnam.
