As a linguist – anthropologist, Nicole Revel, Emerita Director of Research at CNRS, dedicates her life research to the analysis and the safeguarding of endangered languages and oral cultures in the Philippines since 1970.
Her monographic work is the description of Palawan language (Selaf,1978).
She has worked on phonology, lexicography, semantics, pragmatics, rhetoric and poetics. However, another main dimension of her research is related to the Highlanders’ knowledge about the Living and the world they inhabit. It is relevant to cognitive anthropology: “Fleurs de paroles. Histoire naturelle palawan’ (Editions Peters, Leuven 3 vol., Coll. Ethnosciences (314, 317, 323) (1990-92)
[tome I : Les Dons de Nägsalad, 1990, 385 p.
tome II : La Maîtrise d’un Savoir et l’Art d’une Relation, 1991, 372 p.
tome III : Chants d’Amour / Chants d’Oiseaux, 1992, 208 p.].
Since the very beginning of her fieldwork, while she was discovering an Austronesian languages and its sophisticated agglutinative process, she has witnessed and recorded many epics performances and has published in books several of them following the development of sonic technology, while others are in electronic form and on the website:
“Kudaman”, among the Pala’wan (1983 and 1993)
“Mämiminbin”, among the Pala’wan (2000),
“Silungan Baltapa”, among the Sama Dilaut (2005).
“Pala’wan Highlanders Verbal Arts” (2017), Pal/Fr/Engl,10 DVDRom,
is a more recent monographic multimedia publication.
She coordinated a four years seminar on ethnopoetics : Chants d’amour. Asie du Sud-Est. Hommage à Jacques Dournes, Sudestasie Bibliothèque, (1992).
Then in 2000 : she co-created Langues-Musiques-Sociétés (LMS) Unité Mixed 8099 CNRS – Paris V René Descartes (2000-2010).
She edited various books in French and in English on Orality and theVoice :
Pour une anthropologie des voix, Inalco – l’Hatmathan (1993).
Épopées. Les littératures de la voix / Epics. Literatures of Voice, Diogène, n°181 (1998).
Songs of Memory in Islands of Southeast Asia, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, (2013).
From 2007 to 2017, she coordinated, three days seminars / year at Musée du quai Branly on the main topics :
« Les Arts de la performance. Les Littératures de la voix ».
« Anthropologie & Histoire ASE – Chine du Sud ».
Pala’wan Highlanders Verbal Art. A Living Memory in South-East Asia.
Les arts de la parole des Montagnards Pala’wan. Une mémoire vivante en Asie du Sud-Est, a multimedia trilingual work , Pal-Fr-Engl. + 10 DVDRoms was published in 2017. As a scholars at CNRS, she always taught about her research successively at EHESS, Paris V Sorbonne, Musée du quai Branly, and Musée de l’Homme.
A new multimedia book is in press: La nuit, ce jour sans soleil…? Les Montagnards Palawan, une manière d’être au monde, Collection « Anthropologie de la Nuit » Société d’Ethnologie, Université de Nanterre, 2026.
From 1991 to 2002, during the Decade for Cultural Development (Unesco), she coordinated a Seminar on ‘Epics’ one of the five international seminars of the “Integral Study of Silk Roads: Roads of Dialogue”. Following the digital revolution, she sat in motion a new vision of a multimedia collection for long narratives sung by national cultural Minorities (IP) in Luzon, the Visayas Islands, Mindanao, the Sulu and Tawi -Tawi Archipelagos (Philippines).
First launched in 2011, this “Multimedia Collection of Philippines Epics and Ballads” housed at the Pardo de Tavera Special Collections, Rizal Library, Ateneo de Manila University, has been restored, upgraded and enriched since 2023-2024.
It opened again to the public in September 2024, and is access free, after registration,
It offers a plurality of long songs performed by 70 singers-of-tales among 15 national groups, plus a singer among the Taw (Yami) of Botel Tobago.
During annual workshops and training in situ, with the local people and several courses in collaboration with Dr. Leovino Garcia, a philosopher disciple of Paul Ricoeur, and Dr. Fernando Zialcita, anthropologist at the Department of Anthropology, Ateneo de Manila University, she could safeguard this Intangible Heritage during the last decade of the 20th century and housed it at the Pardo de Tavera Special collections , Rizal Library.
The songs were performed recorded in integral and partially videotaped in collaboration with the people in their respective language and socio-cultural context, then transcribed and translated by local knowledgeable persons and scholars. The songs are presented in integral with transcriptions and translations, mostly in English, but sometimes in Tagalog and French.
Numerous related documents consisting of photos with captions, videos and articles, enhance this poetic sung collection, and assist the consultants in their analysis and interpretations.
The Multimedia Collection of Philippine Epics and Ballads is a Google site monitored by Ateneo de Manila University :< epics.ateneo.edu>
Chargée de recherche au CNRS (1972)
Médaille de bronze du CNRS en Linguistique générale (1975).
Docteur d’État, Université Paris V – René Descartes, (1985).
Médaille de CNRS (2007).
Directeur de recherches émérite au CNRS de 2008-2024 (3 éméritats).
Doctor honoris causa (Humanities), Ateneo de Manila University (2009)
Attachée honoraire au Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris (2024).
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