He was the head of the Centre d’études sur la Chine moderne et contemporaine from 2015 to 2018. His last publications in English include Living on borrowed time. Opium in Canton, 1906-1936, Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, and “An illustration of China’s “paradoxical soft power”: the dissemination of the gambling game fantan 番攤 by the Cantonese diaspora, 1850-1950”, Translocal Chinese: East Asian perspectives, vol. 11, no. 2 (Fall 2017), p. 187-207. Paulès is currently conducting research about the history of gambling in China, with a special interest on the game of fantan 番攤.