Alexandre Escudier has been a Research Fellow at the Cevipof (FNSP) since the end of 2004. His PhD thesis (1999) is on the theoretical problem of how to write history in France and Germany in the 19th century. He is a member of the research group, «Pensée politique et histoire des idées», where he is currently working on the complex history (philosophical, socio-political and cultural) of the “crisis of historism” in Germany and France between 1880 and 1932 approximately. This research constitutes the central pillar of a vast historical survey of the Moderns’ awareness of historicity since the 18th century (« La pensée de l’histoire et ses discours. Histoire croisée France-Allemagne, 1750-1950 »). It focuses notably on the ideological and political effects of the major modern philosophies of history and also on their contemporary reformulations after 1989.