After a PhD in social anthropology (EHESS, 2003), Eric Wittersheim joined the East-West Center (a research institute based in Hawai'i) in 2007, and later EHESS as an associate professor in 2011. Currently attached to Lap ( Laboratoire d'anthropologie politique), he was previously a member of Iris, which he directed between 2016 and 2018. He also taught Bislama (pidgin from Vanuatu) at Inalco.

His work focuses on nation-building and the question of visual sovereignty in the postcolonial Pacific, but he has also conducted research on the gentrification of alternative cultures in France, as part of his Habilitation à diriger des recherches: Anthropology of dispossession. Colonizations, resistance, reappropriations (2024). Holder of the Marc Bloch Chair of EHESS in Berlin for the year 2024-25, his current research focuses on mobilizations against climate change in the Pacific island nations.