This project is a result of the partnership between the Universities of Burgundy and Franche-Comté, in close association with the National Archives, the Departmental Archives of Seine-Saint-Denis, and a number of research groups based in various universities in France (Avignon, Paris 1, Paris 7, Paris 8, Lille 3 and Sciences Po), and in Europe (Moscow, Potsdam, Manchester and Rome). Its aim is to create a new website dedicated to political archives with a view to providing a fuller picture of the communist “world.” Firstly, it will include archives produced by both communist and anticommunist organisations, e.g. those related to state surveillance and repression. Secondly, it will link existing collections (those kept at the National Archives and the so-called “Moscow archives”) to collections that are still kept in Moscow and to various tracts, pamphlets, posters, photographs and films. It will be a major new resource that will make possible a fuller and richer history of communism.

In order to contribute to the history of the genocidal and repressive inner workings of the French state, the project aims to list and study the personal files of individuals identified as ideological and racial enemies by the Vichy regime: census records on Jews, anti-Masonic files, files on Jewish children taken into custody by child protection services. Our objective is to understand how these documents were put together, and how they were used, from the Occupation period to the present day, when the issue of opening them to the public and to researchers is of major importance in terms of individual and collective memory. Supported by two history research centers, the IHTP (Université Paris 8, CNRS) and the CRH (EHESS, CNRS), the Archives nationales (AN) and the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), the project will bring together archivists and historians. Combining case studies and a global approach, it will focus on three aspects. It will shift the focus of enquiry, from Paris to the regions, by identifying and studying new records in departmental archives, as well as at the Archives nationales d'outre-mer (ANOM) for colonial Algeria. We want to understand the administrative life of these records, by analysing sources that have so far been neglected by researchers, and records that local census will help us identify. Finally, we want to understand their afterlife, by distinguishing between post-war administrative uses and uses for memorial purposes: reparation, commemoration, ego-history. Their consultation by the people concerned and their descendants will be the subject of an oral survey at the departmental archives, the ANOM and the AN. In addition to the publication of scientific articles and conference proceedings, a guide to sources and a database of those involved in the registration process will be developed. The results will be shared with a wide audience through conferences, virtual exhibitions and a web documentary.

The following project deals with fundamental research in the field of musicology. It aims to study a piece of the history of music teaching in 19th century France (1795-1914), focusing on the Conservatoire national de musique, founded in 1795. It intends to demonstrate, through the study of this school and its comparison with other contemporary teaching institutions, how its foundation had a significant impact on the hole musical French life, through the elaboration of technical and aesthetical norms which gave a new form to musical practice – wether in public concert, performance or composition. A new category of musicians corresponds to this new musical life, the statute of the professional musician and of the amateur moving then away permanently from each other. The research tools this project intends to elaborate (a prosopographical database of the Conservatoire students – winners or not -, digitization and online edition of the pedagogical Methods of the Conservatoire, edition of a “Guide to sources for the history of music teaching in 19th Century France”) concern the operation of the Conservatoire, beginning with the paths and carriers of its students, the content of its teaching, the repertory it raised and which fed its pedagogy. The scientific use of these tools will be done in two directions: the main one (the study of the in-house operation of the Conservatoire) will be the base to the second, developed in the seminar and conferences – the comparison between the Conservatoire and other contemporary teaching institutions. The archives of the Conservatoire national and the library constituted during the 19th Century, attached to the Bibliothèque nationale as soon as 1935, are held and inventoried in two public institutions – Archives nationales and Bibliothèque nationale de France – which put those collections at the disposal of the researchers and allow the elaboration of the tools requisite for this project. The case of the Conservatoire, this public institution, will be used as a point of reference to elaborate a thought on music teaching in 19th Century France. Issued by the team « Savoirs et pratiques du Moyen Âge au XIXe siècle » - EA 4116 SAPRAT from the Ecole pratique des Hautes Etudes (IVe section, Section des sciences historiques et philologiques), this project gathers 4 partners : EPHE, Bibliothèque nationale de France (département de la Musique/IRPMF/UMR 200) which holds the patrimonial collection of the Conservatoire library ; the Archives nationales, holder of the Conservatoire administrative archives ; the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de Paris.

The goal of the DEF19 project is to fill a gap in the history of publishing, by developing a Dictionary of 19th-Century French Publishers. Such a tool does not exist yet – for this period (unlike for the 16th-18th centuries), and for this country (unlike other ones, such as Italy or Austria). All these works have proved to be immensely useful. Our aim will therefore be to create a dictionary which is both traditional and innovative. Traditional, in the form of a printed book, since publishing specialists and practitioners tend to prefer classical supports for reading and information. But also innovative, with an online crowdsourcing database, as well as a research blog designed as tools allowing exchange with the academic community. This project brings together various complementary skills : early-career researchers as well as seasoned scholars on the history of the book and publishing, organised around a team from the universities of Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ) and Paris-Ouest-Nanterre-La Défense (UPOND), especially the Centre d’Histoire Culturelle des Sociétés Contemporaines (CHCSC), working with professionals of documentation, library and archives who could contribute their collections (from the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the French National Archives and the CHCSC), their daily practices and their expertise in the field of dictionaries, directories and databases to the creation of this project. Several scientific events will mark this four-year project, to develop the necessary rigorous methodological framework for data collection as well as for database and dictionary creation and edition. These events will allow us to bring forth the new opportunities for research that will emerge from an exhaustive investigation of an as yet incompletely explored field. As a dictionary, the DEF19 project will be a biographical work, but also a matter of prosopography, which could improve our knowledge of 19th-Century social, economic and cultural history: especially our modern cultural system based on mass culture and on the so-called “civilisation de l’imprimé” (civilisation of the printed word), in which the role of publishers has been and still is essential.