Marie Mauzé obtained a Master's Degree in Interdisciplinary Studies (Anthropology, History, Art, Education), at Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon, United States, in 1976, then defended a doctoral thesis in anthropology , at the EHESS, Paris, in 1985. She joined the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in 1986, and joined the Laboratory of Social Anthropology the same year. She has been Director of Research Emeritus since 2019. She has devoted forty years to the study of societies on the northwest coast of North America. She has conducted ethnographic surveys among the Kwakwak'awak, Nuu-cha-nuulth, and Nuxalk of British Columbia (Canada) and the Tlingit (Alaska). His early research focused on the history of a Kwakwaka'wakw tribe. His work then extended to the study of secret societies and the potlatch, then to that of material culture along two axes: on the one hand, the Western gaze on objects, and on the other hand, on the conceptions localities relating to the vitality and animation of objects and the modalities of representation of the non-humans they embody. The second part of this research is part of the “Anthropology of life” team directed by Perig Pitrou.

Marie Mauzé has published articles in French and foreign journals, and in collective works. She is the author of the book The Sons of Wakai. A History of the Lekwiltoq (ERC, 1992); she co-published with Marine Degli Primitive arts (Gallimard “Discoveries”, 2000). She edited the publication of Present is Past. Some Uses of Tradition in Native Societies (University of Nebraska Press, 2004). She co-directed with Michael Harkin and Sergei Kan Coming to shore. Northwest Coast Ethnology, Traditions, and Visions (University of Nebraska Press, 2004), and with Perig Pitrou Reconfigure the living (Cahiers 19 d'anthropologie sociale, L'Herne 2021). She also participated in the Pléiade volume Claude Lévi-Strauss's Gallimard, 2008).