Prof. François-Joseph Ruggiu

Sorbonne Université, CNRS and Oxford University

François-Joseph Ruggiu is a professor at Sorbonne University and a member of the Centre Roland Mousnier (CNRS, Sorbonne Université), specialising in the social history of the early modern era. Between 2000 and 2010 he dedicated himself to the study of personal writings (écrits du for privé, egodocuments). He has led a research group in France on this subject, as well as a programme run by the French National Research Agency to catalogue all the livres de raison, diaries, memoirs, autobiographies and personal journals held in French public libraries and archives from the Middle Ages to 1914 (https://ecritspersonnels.huma-num.fr/s/ecritspersonnels/page/accueil).

In his personal works, he has explored the way in which these texts reveal personal and social identities, as well as the dynamics of French society in the 17th and 18th centuries. He has favoured interdisciplinary approaches, combining contributions from social history, anthropology, sociology and literary studies. He is interested not only in the content of personal writings, but also in their form, production and reception. He has therefore collaborated with numerous French and European researchers specialising in personal writings, and has co-edited several collective works dont Au plus près du secret des cœurs ? Nouvelles lectures historiques des écrits du for privé, Paris, Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2005 ; Les écrits du for privé. Objet matériel, objet édité, Presses Universitaires de Limoges, 2007 ; Les écrits du for privé en Europe du Moyen Age à l’époque contemporaine. Recenser, Analyser, Editer, Pessac, Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux, 2010 ; Car c’est moy que je peins. Ecritures de soi, individus et liens sociaux, Toulouse, Méridiennes, 2011 ; The uses of first-person writings. Africa, America, Asia, Europe, Berne, Peter Lang, 2013 ; and Les écrits du for privé en France de la fin du Moyen Age à 1914, Paris, Editions du CTHS, 2015