Annick Le Guérer

About the author

Born in Paris on 31 January 1946, Annick Le Guérer is a French academic historian, anthropologist, and researcher whose work centres on a remarkably singular subject: smell. Across her career she has explored the history and anthropology of odours, scents, and perfumes in both Eastern and Western contexts, spanning the sacred and the secular, from Antiquity through to the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020. Her scholarship makes her one of the rare specialists to have mapped the cultural and sensory significance of olfaction across such a sweeping historical arc.