Valérie Gillet (b. 1975) has a PhD (2006) in Indian Studies from the University Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris III. She joined the École française d’Extrême-Orient (EFEO) in 2007 and was posted at the EFEO centre of Pondicherry, of which she became the Head in 2011. Since 2017, she is posted in Paris, where she teaches at the École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE) besides her research activities. Specialist of South India, she works mainly with material culture and Tamil epigraphy of the first millennium found on the territories of the Pāṇḍya and Pallava dynasties, covering almost the entire Tamil-speaking country. Her recent research has focussed on patronage patterns, on the role of Minor dynasties and on the history of selected sites. She is also working on the development of an important divine figure of the Tamil Land, Subrahmaṇya, which led her to begin the exploration of material of the Andhra Country in 2016.
Valérie Gillet is a member of the Task force A of the ERC DHARMA project. She is currently preparing a monograph on the site of Kīḻaiyūr/Mēlappaḻuvūr (9th-11th centuries A.D.), including the edition and translation of its epigraphical corpus of about 130 inscriptions. Besides this work, she will focus on the edition of the inscriptions of some specific sites in the Tamil Country from the end of the first millennium, such as Tillaisthānam, Tirukkōṭikkāval, Tiruneṭuṅkalam, Tirumeyyam, etc.
Institutional web page: https://www.efeo.fr/chercheurs.php?code=386&l=FR&ch=14
Bibliography: https://www.efeo.fr/chercheurs.php?code=388&ch=14&l=FR
