Hamayon, Roberte (1939 - 2025)

French anthropologist and linguist, Roberte Hamayon (1939– ) conducted ethnographic and linguistic research in Mongolia and Buryatia (Eastern Siberia) from 1967 to the end of the 1980s. She then studied the recomposition of identity in a post-communist context. Her work on shamanism has contributed greatly to the renewal of this field of study, in particular through the notion of “play” as omnipresent in ritual life. Director of studies at the École pratique des hautes études, she contributed to the foundation of the Centre for Mongolian and Siberian Studies and created the journal Études mongoles et sibériennes. She also directed the Laboratory of Ethnology and Comparative Sociology at the University of Paris X Nanterre.

Keywords: National identity | Communism | Post-communism | Siberia | Mongolia | Shamanism | Identity | Play