Isabelle Charleux is Director of Research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and member of the Groupe Sociétés Religions Laïcités (GSRL). Her research interests focus on the religion and material culture of the Mongols in Mongolia and China (Inner Mongolia) in the modern and contemporary periods, notably the mechanisms of cultural borrowings, the circulation of motifs, techniques and artists, the phenomena of cultural hybridization, and the material culture of sacred places. Trained as an art historian, she also uses methods of history and anthropology. After a first monograph on the temples and monasteries of Inner Mongolia, she published a book in English on Mongols’ pilgrimages to Wutaishan from the 18th to the early 20th century. She also worked on the Buddhist revival in Inner Mongolia, and on the visual representation of great ancestors and figures of authority in the Mongol world from the 13th to the 21st century. She participated in the Agence Nationale de la Recherche project “Système d’informations numériques de l’emploi des textes dans l’ornementation des monuments bouddhiques: expérimentation sur la tombe de l’empereur Qianlong” under the direction of Françoise Wang-Toutain, and in the Monaco-Mongolian Joint Expedition (Museum of Prehistoric Anthropology, Monaco & Institute of the Academy of Sciences, Mongolia) under the direction of Jérôme Magail. She taught Chinese art history and archaeology at the Sorbonne University (Paris IV). She now organizes the monthly seminar of the Centre d’Études Mongoles et Sibériennes. She is research fellow of several Chinese institutes: International Centre for Buddhist Studies, People’s University (Renmin Daxue), Beijing; Wutai International Institute of Buddhism and East Asian Cultures, Wutaishan; Normal University of Inner Mongolia, Hohhot. She is responsible with Marie-Dominique Even for the collaboration between the Normal University of Inner Mongolia and the École Pratique des Hautes Études. She is co-director with Jean-Luc Lambert and Charles Ramble of the journal Études mongoles et sibériennes, centrasiatiques et tibétaines and is a member of the editorial committee of the journals Extrême-Orient Extrême-Occident, A Journal for Sino-Tibetan Buddhist Art (Beijing Normal University), and Central Eurasian Reader.