Main Research Areas

• Culture and power
• Critical Heritage studies
• Anthropology of contemporary China
• Anthropology of the urban

Florence is an anthropologist and hold a PhD in History and Civilization (EHESS, Paris). Her expertise mainly focuses on cultural policy, critical heritage studies and anthropology of the urban in a comparative perspective (China, Malaysia, Singapore and Switzerland).

She spent 5 years for her PhD project on recreational activities in public space. Based at Peking University and later at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, she did fieldwork on several yangge dance groups in different neighborhoods and explored other “cultural villages” in Shanbei where such dancing practices were promoted by local government. Between 2006 and 2011 she investigated heritage issues from a multicultural perspective in Malaysia and Singapore before returning to Switzerland for studying the making of the first inventory of living traditions or intangible cultural heritage (2009-2014). Recent projects concern first the UNESCO historic urban landscape recommendation and their social and spatial impact at the local level with Gulou as case study and second, the memory and the city with a focus on the Swiss watchmaking towns of La Chaux-de-Fonds/Le Locle.

Florence is senior scientist at the College of Humanities and at the School of Architecture, EPFL. She is also visiting professor at the Department of Architecture and Design at Polytechnic Turin (Italy).

Studies

• 2009-2014 Post-doctoral researcher at the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland
• 2005 PhD, History and Civilisation (Thesis : La danse du yangge en Chine contemporaine. Enjeux politiques et pratiques sociales), le des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris
• 1999-2000 Visiting scholar at the Institute of Sociology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
• 1998 Beijing and at the Contemporary China Center of the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies (RSPAS), Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.
• 1995 Master, Social Sciences (Thesis: La notion de théâtre en anthropologie), Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, University of Lausanne
• 1993 Licence, Anthropology and Sociology, Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, University of Lausanne.

Links

Researchgate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Florence_Bideau
Orcid : https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9499-1479
EPFL: https://people.epfl.ch/florence.graezerbideau