Brigitte Baptandier is an ethnologist and emeritus director of research at CNRS (Laboratoire d'ethnologie et de sociologie comparative, Nanterre). At Société d'ethnologie (Nanterre), she directs the collections ‘Recherches sur la Haute Asie’ and ‘Écritures’. Her research focuses on the feminine in Chinese religion (Taiwan and Fujian). She is interested in trance and the rites of cure and exorcism in the Lüshan Taoist tradition, which is close to shamanism and influenced by Tantric Buddhism. She is the author of La Dame du Bord de l'Eau (1988); The Lady of Linshui. A Chinese female cult (2008). Then, with K.I. Fryklund (translator) and M.E.Lewis, The Lady of Linshui Pacifies demons. A seventeenth-century novel (2021). On the relationship between writing, orality and the body, she has published Du corps au texte. Approches comparatives (2008); Le battement de la vie. Le corps naturel et ses représentations en Chine (2017). Recently, Que jamais le temps ne se brise. Voyage au Mont de la Fleur, Huashan (Shaanxi, China) (2023) deals with the imaginary of night.