Jocelyn Létourneau

Jocelyn Létourneau is a professor with the Department of History, a researcher at CELAT (Centre interuniversitaire d'études sur les lettres, les arts et les traditions) and holder of the Canada Research Chair in Contemporary Political History and Economy in Quebec at the Université Laval. A Fellow of the Zentrum für interdisziplinäre Forschung of Bielefeld University between 1994 and 1995, he is a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, where he was a Fellow between 1997 and 1998. Elected in 2004 to the Academy of Arts, Humanities and Sciences of Canada, he is a graduate of the Université Laval and the University of Toronto. Invited many times as a professor to foreign universities, he sits on the advisory committees of several scholarly journals.
 A prolific author, Jocelyn Létourneau, alone or jointly, has written or directed several works on his preferred topics: the production of a common sense of identity within complex societies, the uses of history in public interlocution, the historical consciousness of young people in a globalization context, the identity status of Quebeckers, etc. Among his publications, what specifically comes to mind is Passer à l'avenir : Histoire, mémoire, identité dans le Québec d'aujourd'hui (2000), which earned him the prix Spirale de l'essai in 2001, and Le Québec, les Québécois : un parcours historique (2004), a small book dedicated to the public that accompanies the permanent exhibition entitled "Le temps des Québécois" at the Museum of Civilization in Quebec. Recently, he published Que veulent vraiment les Québécois? Regard sur l'intention nationale au Québec (français), d'hier à aujourd'hui (Boréal, 2006).
 Having received his education at the Laval University and the University of Toronto, Professor Létourneau is currently in charge of a university/community research alliance, which will enable him to collect data on the ways that Canadians interact with the past and build a historical identity for themselves. Jocelyn Létourneau frequently gets involved in public debates, particularly on sensitive and controversial issues affecting the relationships linking history, memory and identity in the (re)construction of the City.