Valeria Fayad
Chargée de mission pour les relations internationales
Téléphone : 33(0) 1 53 79 88 23
Programmes for Hosting Visiting International Professionals
Applications for 2025 are currectly opened.
Deadline to apply : 25 September 2024
Courants du monde (individual long format) is a programme supported by the French Ministry of Culture allowing the BnF to host visiting international culture professionals for one to three months. During their stays, visiting professionals are mentored by a BnF staff member. They carry out a concrete cooperation project, focus on the study of a specific topic or collection, or on a project related to the holdings or current activities of the BnF (Résidence Culture). Specific residences (Parcours de collections) within this programme are intended to initiate and develop joint studies on the provenance search of collections preserved in France.
Joining the programme
Applications undergo a selection process. A call for applications is held yearly following a calendar set up by the French Ministry of Culture.
Applications for the year 2025 are currently open. The deadline for submission to the BnF is 25 September 2025.
Before sending the application to the BnF, the application must be sent to the cultural service of the French Embassy or the Institut Français of the applicant’s country for a reasoned opinion.
The programme is aimed at experienced professionals employed by foreign cultural institutions outside of France and whose projects are related to the collections and services, scientific work, cultural programs, management or development projects of the BnF.
Applicants must submit a concrete professional project based on knowledge and skills exchanges, the outcome of which can contribute to strengthening the relations between the BnF and their home institutions and countries of origin.
The BnF assesses applications along the main following criteria:
- Interest of the relevant BnF department(s) for the project;
- Potential impact of the applicant’s project in the home country including dissemination plans (such as publications, and participation to conferences and events);
- Affiliation of the applicant with an institution with which the BnF is engaged in, or envisioning a significant partnership.
- The hosting period of visiting professionals can range between 1 to 3 months;
- Each visiting professional is attached to a BnF department and mentored by a BnF staff member with expertise in the relevant field;
- Housing is provided for by the BnF;
- A 1500€ monthly allowance is allocated by the French Ministry of Culture.
- Insurance is provided by the Ministry of Culture on behalf of the candidate.
Visiting professionals are expected to cover their travel costs to and from France. Their home institutions may be able to offer support.
Applications undergo a strict selection process.
The cultural services of French embassies abroad receive the call for application issued by the Ministry of Culture and communicate it to relevant local institutions. Cultural services receive applications and conduct a first screening before forwarding eligible ones to the BnF.
The International Engagement Department of the BnF performs a contextual screening taking into account the relations between the BnF and the applicants’ home institutions and/or countries of origin. Applications are then shared with potential hosting directorates and departments. The latter base their judgement on their interests for the proposed projects and the availability of staff and skills to mentor the visiting professionals. All applications are then examined by a committee chaired by the Director for International Engagement.
After being endorsed by the BnF’s senior management, applications and their evaluations are forwarded to the Ministry of Culture which is in charge of the final selection decision.
About Résidence culture
Résidence culture allows international culture professionals to be hosted in France. The programme was set up by the ministry of culture in 2003 as a priori international cooperation action. It is operated by French public cultural institutions under the guidance of the ministry.
Its main objective is to promote exchanges between culture professionals while giving visiting professionals a first-hand experience of French working methods in the culture field. It also supports the creation and long-term maintenance of exchange networks between French and global public institutions.
About Parcours de collections
Launched by the ministry of culture in 2022, Parcours de collections supports the hosting of international visiting professionals from the museum, library and historical monument sectors whose aim is to study and document the history and trajectory of objects held by French museums and other cultural institutions. International professionals with relevant expertise work closely with French professionals to develop a shared understanding of the history of these objects. Parcours de collections supports in priority, albeit not exclusively, professionals from Africa.
The participants
Ms Angeliki BAMNIOTI, Librarian in the Cataloguing Department, National Library of Greece.
- Topic: Perfecting and appropriating the RDA cataloguing codes, bibliographic description standards and the specificities of the French and Greek languages, in particular the national bibliography.
- Host department: Metadata Department, Services and Networks directorate
Mr Alex BARADEL, Head of the Photographic Archives and Communication Department at the Pierre Verger Foundation, Brazil.
- Topic: Enhancing professional skills for indexing an iconographic collection through the use of keywords integrated into a thesaurus. Strengthening cooperation between the BnF and Pierre Verger Foundation.
- Host department: Prints and Photography Department, Collections Directorate.
Mr Serhi DOTSENKO, Information Technology Director at the Yaroslav Mudryi National Library of Ukraine.
- Topic: Studying the Gallica project in order to draw inspiration from the BnF’s experiences and practices for the creation and development of the Ukrainian digital library.
- Host department: International Engagement Department.
Fr. Luka EL MAKARY, librarian and system administrator at the Coptic Central Papal Library of the Coptic Orthodox Church, Egypt. (Parcours des collections)
- Topic: In accordance with current codicological standards, describing and identifying some of the 148 medieval Coptic manuscript codices held by the BnF and comprising annotations and, for some, a bilingual Arabic text.
- Host department: Manuscripts Department, Collections Directorate.
Ms Jana FRANKOVA, researcher at the Music Department of the Moravian Library, Czech Republic.
- Topic: Supporting the on-going collaboration between the music departments of the BnF and Moravian Library by preparing a collaborative virtual exhibition on the reception of the works of Central European composers by Parisian publishers in the 18th century; study musical relations between France and Central Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries.
- Host department: Music Department, Collections Directorate.
Mr Grégory KUNZ, Senior Director of the Office of the Presidency and Institutional Affairs at the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, Canada.
- Topic: Cooperation within the Réseau Francophone Numérique (RFN) to strengthen BAnQ’s involvement in its governing bodies and cooperation in making French-language cultural content more discoverable.
- Host department: International Engagement Department.
Ms Kateryna LYSKOVA, Deputy Director of the V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University, Ukraine.
- Topic: Project design (creation) of a digital library of French books and manuscripts held by the V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University.
- Host department: Digitisation Department, Services and Networks Directorate.
Mr Sisay Sahile BEYENE (Parcours des collections), assistant professor at the Department of Sociology, University of Gondar, Ethiopia.
- Topic: Studying the Amharic notebooks written by the informants of the Dakar-Djibouti Mission
- Host department: Manuscripts Department, Collections Directorate
Mr Watson FRANÇOIS, Head of the Children’s Section at the National Library of Haiti.
- Topic: Professional capacity building to develop the children’s section of the National Library of Haiti and consolidation of the partnership between the two institutions.
- Host department: CNLJ, Literature and Arts Department, Collections Directorate.
Ms Valeria LEONENKO, manuscript restorer at the National History Museum (NMHU) of Ukraine.
- Topic: Enhancing professional skills, particularly in paper conservation.
- Host department: Conservation Department, Services and Networks Directorate.
Mr Illiassou OUSSEINI MOUSSA, Head of the Audiovisual Department at the Research Institute in Human Sciences of the Abdou Moumouni University (IRSH), Niger.
- Topic: Strengthening professional skills for collecting, conserving and enhancing audiovisual collections, particularly the sound archive of the Jean Rouch collection.
- Host department: Sound, Video and Multimedia Department, Collections Directorate.
Mr Thi Thanh Thuy TRUONG, librarian in charge of English, French and Vietnamese collections at the National Library of Vietnam.
- Topic: Work on the Indochinese collection of the BnF in order to enrich the France-Vietnam digital library, and strengthen the partnership between the two institutions.
- Host department: Literature and Arts Department, Collections Directorate.
Ms Jana FRANKOVA, researcher at the Music Department of the Moravian Library, Czech Republic.
- Topic: Studying the musical relations between France and Central Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries.
- Host department: Music Department, Collections Directorate.
M. Jaroslav STANOVSKY, researcher at the Department of Old Prints and Manuscripts of the Moravian Library, Czech Republic.
- Topic: Studying revolutionary and counter-revolutionary texts from 1789-1799.
- Host department: Philosophy, History and Human Sciences Department, Collections Directorate.
