He is currently a professor at University of Toamasina and, with Stephen Ellis, wrote Madagascar: A Short History, a foundational reference work for the field.
[1] Randrianja earned a Ph.D. and habilitation from the Denis Diderot University of Paris VII.
During political unrest in Madagascar, Randrianja was a potential target due to his advocacy of democracy.
[3][4] In fact, the only prior history of Madagascar written in English was published in 1995 by British diplomat Mervyn Brown.
[7] Later in the 2010s, Randrianja served as a fellow at the Nantes Institute for Advanced Study[8] and at the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy.