Founded in 1846, the first foreign institute to be established in Greece, the École française d’Athènes is a cutting-edge research centre whose mission is to study Greece in its Balkan and Mediterranean context, from prehistory to today.
In addition to the research is the training of the next generation of university students, by facilitating access for young researchers to the field and to Greek culture, and by promoting their integration into a high-level international professional environment.
The École française d’Athènes has:
- a research laboratory, 50 employees working in the various departments
- a library with more than 92 000 works, including 1,800 periodicals, open to researchers, with access to the latest electronic resources
- publications, including an internationally renowned scientific periodical, 16 collections, and more than 10 volumes published per year
- a collection of written and iconographic archives resulting from its missions on sites and in museums in Greece and other Mediterranean countries: 8,000 stamps, more than 635,000 photographs, 52,500 plans and drawings, 240 linear metres of document manuscripts
- a research hub: the École receives more than 300 researchers per year at the Athenian headquarters, in particular at the library. The 7 excavation houses welcome members of scientific missions for their research in the field or in museum reserves.
- a training institute for international recruitment: French and foreign scientific members, doctoral students, resident researchers on international mobility programmes, scholarship holders from all over the world
- a scientific meeting centre: organized throughout the academic year, colloquiums, specialized seminars and conferences cover the entire field of research on Hellenism, from Antiquity to the contemporary period. The École relies on a partnership with French or foreign universities and museums and with the CNRS
- responsibility for prestigious excavation sites: up to ten excavation missions each year in Greece, Albania and Cyprus, in collaboration with the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with the Greek, Cypriot and Albanian Archaeological Services, as well as with Greek, French and European universities
- a role in the development of a research centre bringing together French, Greek and other colleagues and institutions to study Greece, the Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean from the Ottoman era to the changes of the 21st century.
