Vincent Lemire
Vincent Lemire (born 1973 in Paris) is a French historian who directs the French Research Center and teaches at the University of Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée. He studies the history of the Middle East, especially Jerusalem and its Moroccan Quarter, as well as the history of French slums from the 1930s to the 1970s and the history of photography.
He earned the Agrégation in History in 1998 and completed his PhD in 2006 with La soif de Jérusalem, which was published as a book in 2011. His book Jerusalem 1900 (2013) has been translated into several languages. He leads the European Open Jerusalem project, funded by the European Research Council.
Publications and projects: With Katell Berthelot, Julien Loiseau, and Yann Potin, he co-wrote Jérusalem, Histoire d'une ville-monde, des origines à nos jours (Jerusalem: History of a Global City), translated into English in 2022. In 2022 he published his first graphic novel Histoire de Jérusalem, illustrated by Christophe Gaultier; an English edition, The History of Jerusalem: An Illustrated Story of 4,000 Years, was released in 2025 by Abrams ComicArts.
Awards: He received the Prix Augustin Thierry in 2013 for Jérusalem 1900. In 2017, he and his coauthors won the Prix Pierre Lafue and the Prix Sophie Barluet for Jerusalem: History of a Global City.
Reception: His work on Jerusalem across the Ottoman, Mandate, and modern periods is widely praised for solid archival research and clear writing. Frédéric Graber commended La Soif de Jérusalem for its diverse archives and detailed urban history. The English graphic edition of The History of Jerusalem is noted for combining rigorous history with accessible visuals.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 13:37 (CET).