Bernand is a specialist on the history of New World and Latin America, she conducted field surveys of Andean populations in Argentina, Peru and Ecuador. Since the late 1980s, she has devoted herself to the historical anthropology of Latin America.
She teaches at the Paris Nanterre University and is a member of the Institut Universitaire de France.[2] She is also a Deputy Director of the Centre de recherches sur les mondes américains (“Centre for Research on the American Worlds”) since 1999 and member of editorial board of the anthropological and museological journal Gradhiva.[3]
With Serge Gruzinski, she published De l’idolâtrie : Une archéologie des sciences religieuses and two volumes of Histoire du Nouveau Monde. She is the author of Un Inca platonicien : Garcilaso de la Vega 1539–1616 and a heavily illustrated pocket book for “Découvertes Gallimard”, Les Incas : Peuple du Soleil, which has been translated into ten languages, including English. She also wrote in Spanish a crime novel set in Inca Empire.
Selected publications
Portrait of Huáscar, featured on the cover of Les Incas : Peuple du Soleil.
Co-author with Serge Gruzinski, De l’idolâtrie : Une archéologie des sciences religieuses, collection « Philosophie Générale ». Seuil, 1988
Les Incas : Peuple du Soleil, collection « Découvertes Gallimard » (nº 37), série Histoire. Éditions Gallimard, 1988 (new edition in 2010)[4]
US edition – The Incas: People of the Sun, “Abrams Discoveries” series. Harry N. Abrams, 1994
UK edition – The Incas: Empire of Blood and Gold, ‘New Horizons’ series. Thames & Hudson, 1994
Co-author with Serge Gruzinski, Histoire du Nouveau Monde (2 volumes), Fayard, 1991 and 1993
Historia de Buenos Aires, Fondo de Cultura Económica USA, 1999