Claire Lemercier

Directrice de recherche CNRS

History and sociology of law and lawyers, Apprenticeship in France, Economic institutions

Axes de recherche

Governance, economic organizations program
Law, norms, regulations program
Public policy, transformations of the state program
Work, employment, professions program

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

Recherche