A graduate in art history and museology from the École du Louvre and the Sorbonne (Paris IV), Caroline Riberaigua studied Sanskrit and Hindi at the Sorbonne Nouvelle. Her dissertation, defended in 2009, focused on the representations and practice of dance in the Hindu temples of medieval Orissa. At the same time, beginning in 2004, she was in charge of the Tibetan art collection at the École française d’Extrême-Orient, for which she conducted provenance research and compiled a catalog; she then joined the CNRS in 2006 as head of the “Art and Archaeology” section of the FRANCIS database. She joined the Collège de France in 2012 as head of the library and heritage collections of the Center for Indian and Central Asian Studies within UAR 2409.
Her work focuses on the material properties and conservation of collections (manuscripts on ôles; Himalayan bronzes); the reconstruction of their history and the ontological shifts in the status of objects over the course of their history. She also conducts research on the history and art of Orissa and has since turned her attention to the Yogini temples of medieval India. She is a member of the DocAsie steering committee and teaches at the École du Louvre.
