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Didier Gazagnadou is a French anthropologist born in 1952. He is a University Professor (Dr. HDR.) and teaches at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at University Paris VIII, where he continues his research on technical and cultural diffusion in Eurasia, specially in Iran and the Arab World, with a partially diffusionist approach.

Biography
After completing studies in sociology and philosophy at the universities of Paris I and Paris VIII, Didier Gazagnadou went on to study anthropology. He is now a University Professor in anthropology at University Paris VIII and lead researcher in the laboratory “History of power, knowledge and societies" at Paris VIII. During the course of his career, he was based in Iran on two occasions and once in the United Arab Emirates. First of all in 1993 and then in 1997 (in Teheran), where he was a researcher at the Institut Français de Recherche en Iran (IFRI) . He was subsequently posted in the Arabian Peninsula from September 2007 to August 2010, where he worked for the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs as Counsellor for Cooperation and Cultural Action at the French Embassy in the United Arab Emirates. He is also a member of the French Association of Anthropologists and of the Société Asiatique.

Works and career
His work partly follows in the footsteps of André Leroi-Gourhan, André-Georges Haudricourt, Robert Creswell and Joseph Needham. This cultural technological approach is combined with a theoretical comparative analysis of the political and cultural effects of diffusion and borrowing on cultures in Eurasia.

His publications focus mainly on case studies of the diffusion and borrowing of techniques, words, cultural elements, and even institutions, particularly in the Middle East (especially Iran). His work on Iranian and Arabian cultural areas aims to fill the void in the domain of studies of techniques in the Muslim world and to determine the role of the Muslim Middle East in exchanges of techniques between Eastern Asia and Europe, from the perspective initiated by Joseph Needham.

The study of diffusion, particularly in the domain of transport techniques (by horse, camel, mule; by road, bridge, cart, ship, train, car, plane) and communication techniques (books, letters, post, telegraph, telephone, internet), has played, and continues to play a central role as these techniques were (and often still are) one of the conditions for other cases of diffusion. He also continues to study the problem of diffusion in the history of the discipline, which is also a central question in archaeology and history.

His research is also inextricably linked to some of the major problems of the contemporary world and in particular, the very topical question of the transfer of technology. Currently, diffusion towards the southern or so-called Third World countries is built on earlier diffusions, and is linked to the very rapid cultural and subjective transformations that practically all societies, cultures and power systems are undergoing at the present time. For him, a critical examination of diffusions and techniques, from an anthropological perspective, is an essential and productive approach in the present-day world. His work, in particular on postal relays, has been widely commented in diverse reviews, such as Les Annales: Histoires et Sciences sociales, The Journal of Asian Studies, la Revue du Monde Musulman et de la Méditerranée, Mediterranean Historical Review, Les Cahiers de Civilisation Médiévale, L'Homme, etc. In addition, certain authors have used his research as a basis for their own work, in particular Alberto Minetti, who recently published an article in Nature.