Pierre Rosanvallon

Pierre Rosanvallon (born 1 January 1948) is a French intellectual and historian, named professor at the Collège de France in 2001. He holds there the chair in modern and contemporary political history. His works are dedicated to the history of democracy, French political history, the role of the state, and the question of social justice in contemporary societies. He is also director of studies at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales, where he led the Raymond Aron Centre of Political Researches between 1992 and 2005. Rosanvallon was in the 1970s one of the primary theoreticians of workers' self-management in the French Democratic Confederation of Labour (CDFT) trade union.

He graduated from the Hautes Études Commerciales (HEC) management school with a Ph.D. from the École des hautes études en sciences sociales. In 1982, he created the Fondation Saint-Simon think-tank, along with François Furet. The Fondation dissolved in December 1999. Rosanvallon is a member of the Scientific Counsels of both the French National Library (since 2002) and the École Normale Supérieure(since 2004) in Paris.

Rosanvallon created in 2002 the "intellectual workshop" La République des Idées, which publishes a review and books.