BIO
Claire Lemercier is originally a specialist of the history of French economic institutions, especially hybrid public-private institutions. This has led her to study chambers of commerce, commercial courts and labor courts, and to compare nineteenth-century patterns of statecraft in the United States and France (with Nicolas Barreyre) and notarial practice in eighteenth-century France and Italy (with Francesca Trivellato). She is currently conducting research on the history of apprenticeship in eighteenth and nineteenth-century France (with Clare H. Crowston), and on access to the French Supreme Courts (lawyers and judicial aid) from the nineteenth century to the present (with Laure Blévis, Ana Maria Falconi, Liora Israël and Mélanie Sargeac).
A specialist in quantitative methods in the field of history—especially network analysis—Claire Lemercier has taught and published a great deal on these topics, often in collaboration with Claire Zalc. In 2019, they published Quantitative Methods in the Humanities: An Introduction (University of Virginia Press) and created a companion blog.
publications
- Claire Lemercier et Francesca Trivellato, "1751 and Thereabout: A Quantitative and Comparative Approach to Notarial Records", Social Science History, 46 (3), 2022, p.555-583, https://hal-sciencespo.archives-ouvertes.fr/CSO/halshs-03760318
- Claire Lemercier et Claire Zalc, "Back to the Sources. Practicing and Teaching Quantitative History in the 2020s", Capitalism: A Journal of History and Economics, 2 (2), p. 473-508, 2021, https://hal-sciencespo.archives-ouvertes.fr/CSO/hal-03037343
- Fabien Eloire, Claire Lemercier et Veronica Aoki Santarosa, "Beyond the personal-anonymous divide. Agency relations in powers of attorney in France in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries", The Economic History Review, 72 (4), 2019, p. 1229-1250, https://hal-sciencespo.archives-ouvertes.fr/CSO/hal-01358365
- Nicolas Barreyre et Claire Lemercier, "The Unexceptional State: Rethinking the State in the Nineteenth Century (France, United States)", American Historical Review, 126 (2), 2021, p.481-503, https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-03413248v1
- Claire Lemercier et Claire Zalc, Quantitative Methods in the Humanities. An Introduction, Charlottesville, University of Virginia Press, 2019, https://quanthum.hypotheses.org/
All publications
TEACHING ACTIVITIES
Quantitative Methods for History workshop (FR) (open to students of all levels)
OTHER ACTIVITIES
Member of Enterprise & Society’s editorial board
Member of the committee of The Connected Past
Member of the French Committee for Open Science (CoSO)
Co-coordinator of the Center for History and Economics in Paris (CHEP) (with David Todd) (2019-2021)
Awards
2008
CNRS Bronze medal
EDUCATION
2012
Habilitation (professorial thesis), University of Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis
2001
Ph.D. in History, EHESS
1998
Master’s degree
1997
Agrégation (teaching certification) in History
1996
Bachelor’s degree in History, Sciences Po - Paris