Prof. Sébastien Billioud and Prof. Joël Thoraval Awarded the 2015 Bernheim Prize for the History of Religion

The Foundation is pleased to announce that Prof. Sébastien Billioud (University Paris Diderot) and Prof. Joël Thoraval (EHESS Paris) have been awarded the prestigious 2015 Bernheim Prize for history of religion by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres for their book Le Sage et le peuple, le renouveau confucéen en Chine (CNRS Editions, 2014), recently published in English as The Sage and the People, The Confucian Revival in China (Oxford University Press, 2015).

Established by the Bernheim Foundation, the Bernheim Prize is awarded each year to a seminal book characterized by the originality of its approach and the scope of its investigations. The award-winning work should either contribute to the understanding of the role of religion in contemporary societies or cast new light on the interactions between religious groups.

Prof. Billioud and Prof. Thoraval’s monograph was completed as part of a Research Grant funded by the Foundation (RG009-P-08: The “Confucian revival” in Mainland China: Forms and meanings of “Confucian piety” today), the goal of which was to study the revival of Confucianism in China. The project’s research team conducted socio-anthropological fieldwork on forms of religious life inspired by Confucianism, including the revival of Confucian centers of piety, leading figures of Confucian religiosity, the interaction between Confucianism and Buddhism, the roles played by voluntary religious associations known as “redemptive societies”, etc.

Professor Sébastien Billioud and Professor Joël Thoraval received Bernheim Prize