Professor Pradines is the manager of Muslim Cultures of the Indian Ocean programme and Professor of Islamic Art and Architecture at AKU-ISMC. He is an archaeologist specialising in the Middle East and East Africa. Prior to joining AKU-ISMC in 2012, he was in charge of Islamic archaeology at the French Institute of Cairo from 2001 to 2012. He completed his PhD in Islamic archaeology from Sorbonne University, Paris IV in 2002. He was a lecturer in Islamic Archaeology at Cairo University and founded the First Field School of Islamic Archaeology in Egypt. His fieldwork includes the direction of excavations of the Fatimid and Ayyubid walls of Cairo, excavations of Kilwa, Swahili medieval harbour of Tanzania and of Gedi, the Swahili medieval harbour of Kenya and more recently of Dembeni (Mayotte, French Comoros).
He is also an Associate Researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) in Paris, UMR 8167 Orient et Méditerranée, APIM programme; member of the editorial board and book review editor of the Journal of Islamic Archaeology; member of the editorial board of the Journal of the Dominican Institute, MIDEO, Cairo.
His publications include Earthern Architecture in Muslim Cultures (Brill, 2018) La Collection d'armes orientales de Pierre Loti (Les Indes Savantes, 2019) and Historic Mosques in Sub-Saharan Africa (Brill, 2022.
