Michèle Pirazzoli-T'Serstevens (1934–2018)

Michèle Pirazzoli-t'Serstevens was born in Paris to a prominent Franco-Belgian family, and studied at the Lycée Racine. She studied Asian languages (including Vietnamese, Chinese, Hindi, Tamil, and Japanese) at the École nationale des langues orientales vivantes (ENLOV), and the École du Louvre. She attended Peking University from 1964 to 1965.

She obtained her doctorate in 1971 and became a member of staff at the École pratique des hautes études (EPHE), where she taught archaeology from 1977 to 2002 and became the first professor and chair of ancient Chinese archaeology in Western Europe. In addition to her work at EPHE, she was a curator for the Musée Guimet and the Musée d'Ennery, and taught East Asian art history at the École du Louvre. She participated in archaeological excavations at Sambor Prei Kuk et Mimot in Cambodia in 1961-1962, Bahrain in 1978, Suhar in 1982, Julfar in 1994, and Brunei in 1998.
She published numerous articles in the Encyclopædia Universalis, the Yearbook of the EPHE, as well as in Arts Asiatiques (Asian Arts), of which she was a member of the editorial board for more than 30 years. She won the Prix Delalande-Guérineau of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in 1976 for her book La civilisation du royaume de Dian à l'époque Han (The Civilization of the Dian Kingdom in the Han Period) and the
Prix Herbert Allen Giles of the Académie for her 2009 book Giuseppe Castiglione, 1688-1766: Peintre et architecte à la cour de Chine (Giuseppe Castiglione, Painter and Architect at the Chinese Court). She married Paolo Antonio Pirazzoli, a geographer and research director at the CNRS.