Florence Graezer Bideau is an anthropologist and sinologist. She heads the Research group Heritage, Culture and City. She received her PhD in History and Civilization at EHESS (Paris) in 2005. Since 2009, she has been a senior lecturer and senior scientist in EPFL’s College of Humanities. She was visiting professor in the Department of Architecture and Design, Politecnico di Torino (Italy) between 2015 and 2021. She is currently a member of the Doctoral Program Architecture and Sciences of the City committee and of the Habitat Research Center scientific board in the School of Architecture, Civil and Environment Engineering in EPFL.  

Florence’s research interests include the relation between culture and power; heritage issues; and the making of the city from a comparative perspective, mostly between China, Malaysia, and Switzerland. She is particularly interested in developing interdisciplinary projects on urban anthropology and heritage, and in experimenting with new fieldwork methods. Her recent research has been supported by the Swiss Network for International Studies and the Swiss National Science Foundation. Her last publication Porter le temps. Mémoires urbaines d'un site horloger, awarded with the Koos Bosma Prize in Planning History Innovation 2022, focuses on watchmaking town planning of Le Locle and La Chaux-de-Fonds in Switzerland. She is currently leading the SNSF project, “Uses of cultural heritage at the Beijing Winter Olympic Games of 2022”.