Emmanuel FRANCIS was educated at the Université catholique de Louvain (Belgium), where he obtained his doctorate in languages and literatures (2009). He is currently a researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and is affiliated to the Centre d'études de l'Inde et de l'Asie du Sud / Centre for South Asian Studies (CEIAS, UMR 8564, EHESS-CNRS) in Paris. Specialized in Sanskrit and Tamil philology and in the history of South India, his publications include several articles on Indian epigraphical sources.
The first volume of his study on the royal ideology of the Pallava dynasty of South India (circa 300-900), Le discours royal en Inde du Sud ancienne, has appeared in 2013. The second volume will appear shortly. Charlotte SCHMID is director of studies of the Ecole française d'Extrême-Orient (EFEO). She divides her research between two areas of field-work, the north and the south of the Indian subcontinent.