Christophe Jaffrelot is a CERI-CNRS Senior Research Fellow who teaches at Sciences Po in three different schools. He has served as director of CERI in 2000-2008. He was elected president of the French Association of Political Science (AFSP) in July 2020.

He holds degrees from Sciences Po (1985), Sorbonne University (1986), EHESS (1986) and INALCO (National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilisations - 1990) and a Ph.D. in political science from Sciences Po (1991).
He joined CNRS in 1991, was awarded the CNRS Bronze Medal in 1993 and became a CNRS senior research fellow in 2002. He has been president of the Political Science section of the French National Committee for Scientific Research (CNRS) from 2012 to 2016.

He is the senior editor of a CERI-Sciences Po book series, Comparative Politics and International Studies, published by Hurst (London) and Oxford University Press (New York). He has been the editor-in-chief of Critique internationale (1998-2003) and then his director (2003-2008).
He belongs to the editorial board of several journals (incl. India Review, Asian Survey, Nations and Nationalism and International Political Sociology).
He chairs the scientific council of the French Institute (UMIFRE - MAE/CNRS) in Asia. He is a permanent consultant with the Policy Planning Staff of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and a Nonresident Scholar with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (Washington DC).
He has been visiting Professor at Columbia University, Princeton University, Yale University, Johns Hopkins University and Montreal University. He has been Global Scholar at Princeton University (2012 - 2015) and teaches at the King's India Institute (London) since 2012.

He is a member of the scientific councils of the Südasien Institut of Heidelberg University, of the Center for the Study of Multilevel Federalism (New Delhi) and of the South Asia Center of Göttingen University.
He’s a member of the Academic Council of Ashoka University, where he serves as chairman of the Trivedi Center for political Data.

His current research deals with the sociology of the Indian political personnel (including the Members of Parliament and the Members of the Legislative Assemblies), the Dargahs of Ajmer, the India-Pakistan relations, the political history of Gujarat (from the point of view of the relations between politicians and businessmen in particular) and populist politics with special reference to the “Modi phenomenon”.

Christophe Jaffrelot and Bernard Haykel are the codirectors of the major three-year research project Muslims in India on Muslim communities in India launched by Sciences Po, the university of Columbia and he university of Princeton thanks to the generous support of the Henry Luce Foundation.