On October 10, 2023 the closing session of the Archival City masterclass took place in the presence of some twenty M1 and M2 students and several ACP laboratory professors (Corinne Maitte, Frédéric Saly Giocanti, Giuliano Milani and Vincent Lemire).

The masterclass ran from March to September 2023. Over the course of seven sessions, it brought together three M1 and M2 students and three supervisors (Loic Vadelorge, Carole Lamoureux and Annalaura Turiano) members of the Archival City research project), as well as several speakers from the different study fields covered by the Archival City research program. The aim of the masterclass was to provide an introduction to research work in modern and contemporary history. Methodology of archival description, presentation of the method for writing data and research papers alternated with the presentation of students’ dissertations.

During the closing session, the supervisors gave a brief presentation of the master class’s objectives and program. This was followed by a presentation of the students’ work. Vincent Kuntz presented his dissertation on Parisian urban disasters in the press and literary accounts from 1764 to 1780.  Anaïs Parmentier presented the archival corpus of her M2 dissertation “Economiser et maîtriser l’énergie : les HLM face aux crises énergétiques (1974- 1982)”. Finally, Wilfried Pingault presented the construction of his M2 dissertation on hydro-history based on the archives of a new conurbation (Grand Paris Sud). M1 and M2 students took part in the discussion that followed each presentation, asking questions about research methodology or specific repositories.

 

Despite the diversity of their subjects and research questions, the three students presented the constitution of their archival corpus, underlining the need to start with the history of archive producers. They highlighted the method used to select sources and the difficulties encountered, as well as the data extraction and spatialization tools used, as in the case of the maps created by Vincent Kuntz to visualise the fires in the French capital.

Vicent Lemire, director of Archival City, gave the closing address and invited students to attend the Archival City closing conference on November 9 and 10.

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