Professor Perig Pitrou

Perig Pitrou, Ph.D. is an Anthropologist and Research Director at CNRS and Senior Researcher at the Maison Française d’Oxford. He leads the team Anthropology of Life in the Laboratoire d’Anthropologie Sociale (LAS) at the Collège de France, Université Paris Sciences et Lettres.

Perig is PSL lead on the Off Earth Atlas Project funded by the IAS, UCL’s Cities Partnerships Programme, and Université PSL (Paris Sciences et Lettres). This interdisciplinary project, led by anthropologists, will consider life in outer space in many different and exciting ways — from what biological definitions of life are to the new social relations that come about in outer space. Read the 4th Off Earth Atlas Workshop.

The long-term ethnographic investigation that Perig is conducting among the Amerindian populations of Oaxaca (Mexico) on traditional practices (rituality, agriculture, crafts, medicine, system of politico-religious offices) aims to highlight the theories of life that prevail in this region of the world.

The results of this work were presented in the monographs Le chemin et le champ: Ritual Journey and Sacrifice among the Mixe of Oaxaca (Mexico), published by the Ethnological Society and The Many Lives of a Mexican Village: Toward an Anthropology of Life (submitted) and in the collective works La noción de vida en Mesoamérica and Montrer/Occulter: Ritual Visibility and Context. A book titled Anthropology of Life II: Mesoamerican Investigations is also in the works.

Previously, Perig was a grantee at the Center for Mexican and Central American Studies (CEMCA, Mexico) during 2006–2007. He published La noción de vida en Mesoamérica in 2011. He was a member of the School of Advanced Hispanic and Iberian Studies at Casa de Velázquez in Madrid from 2007 until 2009, and until 2010, the Attachée temporaire d’enseignement et de recherche (ATER) Chair of Natural Anthropology, Collège de France.

Between 2010 and 2011, Perig was Postdoctoral Researcher at the Musée du quai Branly and Visiting Scholar at the University College London until 2012.

In 2012, Perig became 2nd Class Research Fellow at the CNRS and from 2013 to 2014, he led the research program Living beings and artifacts, supported by the Fyssen Foundation, before becoming deputy director of the CNRS–PSL interdisciplinary incubator Domestication and Production of Life.

The incubator supported by the CNRS Interdisciplinary Mission engages in interdisciplinary reflection involving the natural sciences (biology, chemistry, physics), the human sciences (anthropology, epistemology, philosophy, sociology) and technologies (robotics) in order to question the border and the definitions of the living and the non-living.Read Êtres vivants/artefacts, processus vitaux/processus techniques : remarques à propos d’un cadran analytique.

From 2016 until 2019, he was the 1st Class Research Fellow at CNRS before becoming the Senior Research Director.

He is a member of the Institut de recherche interdisciplinaire sur les enjeux sociaux (IRIS) steering committee Origins and Conditions for the Appearance of Life. These interdisciplinary collaborations, which bring together researchers in the natural sciences and social sciences, constitute the empirical basis of a comparative project which links traditional biotechnologies and contemporary biotechnologies (biomedicine, bioart, biodesign, synthetic biology, robotics), drawing attention to possible points of convergence, for example, in the fields of biomimicry or do-it-yourself biology.

His project Anthropology of Life involves an epistemological endeavor that articulates the different approaches used to tackle the topic of life (Ecologies of Life, Science and Technology Studies, Anthropology of Biopolitics, and Forms of Life). After the publication of Les Anthropologues et la vie, he is completing the writing of his book Anthropology of Life: Object and Methods.

Within PSL and the Anthropological Comparative Framework, Perig leads the Life at Work interdisciplinary collective project and explores the potential of bioart and biodesign (Labex TransferS). He investigates the relations between Biotechnology and Society, in research programs funded by the Fyssen Foundation, the CNRS, PSL University, and the Agence Nationale pour la Recherche (ANR).

As part of PEPR Origins, he directs the Humanities and Social Sciences Axis component of an investigation into the origins of life and exobiology. Launched in March 2023, the Origins Priority Research Program and Equipment (PEPR) is funded by France 2030: a program in search of the origins of life plan. The 7-year program will focus on six research areas in the field of the origins of planets and life.

He is also the Scientific Director of the City-Metabolism Chair, which brings together PCA-STREAM and PSL University (Paris Sciences et Lettres). The aim is to identify how interdisciplinary collaborations can help overcome the challenges of building the urban worlds of the future.

He founded the collective Life in the Making to explore how interdisciplinary collaborations can bring new insights for improving the quality of life in human societies. Read Life as a Making.

He now carries out two interdisciplinary projects, on “Astrobiology”, with astrophysicists, and on “Living Cities”, with architects and urban planners. His research in Urban Archeology and History helps him with the creative evolution of the city of tomorrow. Read the Living Cities Lecture Series.

Perig was Visiting Scholar at the University College London, the University of Brasilia, the UNAM of Mexico, and the Casa de Velázquez of Madrid. He has written and co-edited 15 books and special issues, published in France, Brazil, the United States, Australia, and Japan.

He co-edited and published Ecological Nostalgias: Memory, Affect and Creativity in Times of Ecological Upheavals, Puissance du végétal et cinéma animiste, Enigmes et portraits dans la Sierra Madre, Le chemin et le champ – parcours rituel et sacrifice chez les Mixe de Oaxaca, Mexique, La noción de vida en Mesoamérica, and La noción de vida en Mesoamérica.

His works on life course rituals, animism, biotechnologies, biomimicry, biobanking, bio art, and astrobiology have been presented in international journals such as Current Anthropology, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Mana, L’Homme, Techniques & Culture, and in more than 200 communications given in research seminars and international conferences. Follow his Contributions at ResearchGate. Read his Articles, Chapters, and Editorial Issues and Animism today.

Perig earned his Master’s Degree of Arts in Philosophy at the University Sorbonne Paris I in 1995. He earned his Ph.D. in Anthropology at the EHESS, Paris in 2010 with his thesis titled Parcours rituel, dépôt cérémoniel et sacrifice dans la Mixe Alta de Oaxaca (Mexique) : l’intégration de l’activité des agents non-humains entre construction de la vie et résolution des conflits.

He has carried out a long-term ethnographical investigation in Mexico to study the conceptions of life and wellbeing and the relations with the natural environment in Amerindian communities. The results of this work are presented in Le chemin et le champ. Read Parcours rituel et sacrifice chez les Mixe de Oaxaca (Mexique).

In 2016, he received the bronze medal for his research in the field of anthropology of life from CNRS.

Watch Eating the living – Life abounds in food – microbes from the soil to our belly and Unesco Chair in World Food Systems Conversation.

Visit his Homepage, Work page, ResearchGate page, and LinkedIn profile. Follow him on Google Scholar, Facebook, Instagram, Cairn Info, and Twitter. Follow his Contributions at La Vide Des Idées.