Franciscus Verellen is director of the French School of Asian Studies, Ecole Française d'Extrême-Orient (EFEO), since March 2004. A specialist of medieval China, he holds the chair in History of Taoism in the joint faculty of the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, the Ecole Nationale des Chartes, and the EFEO. Having joined the EFEO in 1991, Verellen previously served as head of its Taipei and Hong Kong Centers and of the Chinese Studies division.

After doctoral studies at Oxford and Paris, Franciscus Verellen taught at Columbia University and the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes. In addition to research fellowships in Europe and Asia, Verellen held visiting appointments at Princeton University, the University of California at Berkeley, and the Chinese University of Hong Kong. In 2004 he was named honorary professor in the Department of Chinese Studies at the University of Hong Kong, in 2005 Stewart Fellow in the Humanities at Princeton University, in 2007 honorary professor in the Department of Religious and Cultural Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. F. Verellen is chairman of the Steering Committee of the European Consortium for Asian Field Study (ECAF), which was founded in 2007 at his initiative. In 2008 he was elected academician in the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres (Institut de France).

Franciscus Verellen has participated in many international conferences and research activities and has published more than fifty articles and books on regional culture in medieval China and the history of Taoism, including The Taoist canon: A historical companion to the Daozang, 3 volumes, The University of Chicago Press, 2004 (edited with Kristofer Schipper).