François-Xavier Fauvelle is Professor at the Collège de France, where he holds the chair of History and Arc Archaeology of African Worlds. A historian and archaeologist of Africa, he is the author of some  hundred and fifty scholarly articles and twenty books, including Le Rhinocéros d’or: Histories of the African Middle Ages (2013, “Grand Prix du livre d’histoire de Blois” award), translated into a dozen languages including English (2018, “Medieval Book of the Year” award) and Arabic (2023); L’Invention du Hottentot (2002, poche 2018) ; À la recherche du Sauvage idéal (2017) ; Penser l’histoire de l’Afrique (2022). He edited L’Afrique ancienne, de l’Acacus au Zimbabwe (2018, « Grand Prix du livre d’archéologie de Narbonne » award), and co-edited (with Anne Lafont) L’Afrique et le monde: histoires renouées (2022). His inaugural lecture at the Collège au France was published under the title Leçons de l’histoire de l’Afrique (2020). As an archaeologist, François-Xavier Fauvelle has directed several excavations, including that of the medieval city of Sijilmâsa in southern Morocco, on the edge of the Sahara. These excavations were the subject of a monograph (with Elarbi Erbati and Romain Mensan): Sijilmâsa, cité islamique du Maroc médiéval : recherches archéologiques maroco-française 2011-2016 (2020). François-Xavier Fauvelle has also directed collective research in South Africa and Ethiopia. He is a specialist in medieval African polities and cities, architecture and the circulation of raw materials and luxury objects. He approaches these phenomena by bringing together documents of different natures, discursivities and temporalities. In his lectures and publications, he promotes the idea of a “conversation” of African societies with other societies involved in the global Middle Ages.