CNRS Senior researcher
kaluszyn's picture
Institutional membership: 
Centre national de la recherche scientifique
CNRS Senior researcher (f)
Accredited to supervise research
Research areas: 
Social history
Penal justice
Government science
Research team: 
1030 rue des Résidences 38400 ST MDH



A historian by training, I did my PhD in contemporary history on the birth of criminology as a social science in 1988. Recruited by the Sociology department of CNRS, I was allocated to the Political Science section, where I was accredited to supervise research.
I subsequently moved on to historical and social analysis of the State and government science under France’s Third Republic, with the accent on law and order, and the framing of penal legislation and policy. This led me to engage more contemporary, international thinking on justice and the socio-political modalities of legislation.
My work has focused on the republican State, the Republic and law and order in the 19th century, on the production of social, judicial and political norms, and how they are imposed through public policy on law and justice. In terms of objects my interests include criminological and penitentiary knowledge, the instruments constituting learning, the science of government, the reform movement in France and Europe and the phenomenon of judicialization, in association with Jacques Commaille.
I have sought to address several key questions: order and disorder; the governability of a democratic society and the connection between civil society and political power; the identity of the Republic and its values, through the principles of its action and its political initiatives.
In terms of approach, this work has contributed to the problématique of the science of government and supported the movement to develop a historical sociology of politics. By way of the objects addressed my work has helped to develop a political sociology of law and justice.