Welcome to the website of our international conference "Love Tokens and the Heritage of the Indian Ocean" which will take place in November 2023 in La Réunion (France).

This conference is the result of a partnership between the DIRE and OIES CRESOI laboratories of the University of La Réunion and the APILab laboratory of Reunion Island’s Fine Arts School.

Supported by the Observatoire des Sociétés de l'Océan Indien (O.S.O.I.- FED 4127), this conference follows an international conference which was held in 2018, entitled “From Tokens of Love to Archived Relics: Private Life and Material Culture in Indian Ocean Societies” and the publication in 2020 of the proceedings of this scientific event (see https://lovetokens.sciencesconf.org). For more information about the proceedings of this conference, see the 'publications' tab on this website.

In the age of social networks, where private relationships are initiated or pursued at a distance, virtual cards, bouquets and kisses are replacing the traditional tokens of affection that had until recently made it possible to materialise love relationships. The second part of this project is inspired by these changes and takes a close interest in love tokens and the rhetoric of love over the centuries. It is divided into two main areas of study:

- The first concerns the development of heritage collections from the Indian Ocean (press archives, museum collections, family archives, etc.), whether they relate to groups, families or anonymous or well-known individuals, artists, writers or leading or supporting figures in Indian Ocean societies.

- A second area of study which emerged from a partnership with the École Supérieure d'Art de La Réunion and its APILab laboratory, considers love tokens around the notion of landscape.