1) Thanks to my affiliation with a research institution based in the Netherlands, I was invited to organise an UISPP intersection congress panel held in Indonesia (former colony of the Netherlands) in November 2025 with some French colleagues. This panel was intended to bring together scholars working, among other features of Indonesian prehistory, on the national, international and colonial dimensions that shaped the collecting practices of palaeontologists. Thus, as well as enabling me to meet fellow archaeologists and historians from all over the world and extend my network of collaborations to Asia, this panel allowed me to reflect on my area of study through the lens of a different geographical region and the collaboration of various scientific and research institutions.
Furthermore, the « return » of the Dubois collection (comprising Homo erectus remains discovered during the colonial era), recently authorised by the Netherlands, has offered unprecedented and significant opportunities for discussion. In this regard, we organised a special session of our panel, featuring the Ambassador/Deputy Permanent Representative of Indonesia to UNESCO, Dr. Ismu Ismunandar who dialogued with Dr. Rosalie Hans, from NIOD, the government agency that carried out the expert assessment recommending the return of the collection, which Indonesia has been awaiting since the Second World War1.
2) Looking together at unpublished Vatican documents, the Catholic and Vatican press, and documents from the 1925 Vatican Missionary Exhibition, along with Italian press and other documents from scientific archives, objective 2 was to examine the dissemination of discourses on universalism (scientific, Catholic, fascist) that were circulating in the Roman public space.
I had already begun its researches during my previous postdoctoral research into the scientific collections exhibited at the opening of La Sapienza University’s new, fascist-era, campus in 1935. On the other hand, the objective was almost entirely achievable within the time I had available, even though the dissemination will take longer than the duration of the grant. Over these ten and a half months, I have been able to make progress with archival research and to design and organise a workshop entitled ‘Situating Universalism’, which will bring together many specialists in this field and will enable me to complete the work for my Objective 2 whilst, at the same time, establishing collaborations that will be invaluable for my future career at the CNRS.
In addition to archival research (Vatican Archives, Central Archives of the State in Rome) and in some libraries (Biblioteca Caetani, Storia moderna e contemporanea, Rome), I have presented the project at the Fasos (UM) historians’ seminar in March 2024, followed by another presentation of the results in September 2025, as part of the department’s annual ‘summer harvest’ meeting. A group of researchers from UM (Fasos) also trained me with a mock presentation for the CNRS (French) exam in April 2025. I have also participated at some secondment institution (EfR) seminars, such as the “Les 5 à 7 de la Crypta” seminar in history of archaeology, and presented her researches twice at the UNIONE seminar Rome Modern Italy Seminar.
