| About us

Florence March
Director of IRCL
Professor in British theatre
16th–17th c.

Jean-Christophe Mayer
Deputy Director of IRCL
CNRS Director of Research

L’Institut de recherche sur la Renaissance, l’âge Classique et les Lumières (IRCL) is a joint entity of CNRS and University of Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3 (UMR 5186), located at the Saint Charles site.
Les travaux de l’IRCL portent sur les arts vivants, les cultures et les patrimoines en Europe de la Renaissance aux Lumières : généalogies et enjeux contemporains. La recherche collective s’organise autour de trois pôles :
- Field 1: Cultural environments in transition, from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment
- Field 2: Exchanges and translations in sixteenth to eighteenth-century Europe
- Field 3: Contemporary dynamics of cultural legacies in a globalised world
| IRCL: a laboratory for culture and the performing arts
In addition to its three fields, which combine fundamental and applied research on the construction of modernity, IRCL is a laboratory for culture and the performing arts.
L’unité a intégré en 2021 l’accord-cadre conclu entre le ministère de la Culture et le CNRS pour une période de cinq ans (2021–25), grâce en particulier au renouvellement de la convention between IRCL and Printemps des Comédiens, the second largest theatre festival in France in terms of attendance and influence.

IRCL is co-founder of the Dezède musicology database (https://dezede.org/) a research tool that is dedicated to the maintenance of a chronological archive of performances. It serves as an example of how the performing arts can be served by the digital humanities, in accordance with Open Access principles. The Paris Opéra-Comique has entrusted Dezède with its entire archive, which makes it a unique depository in the national and international landscape.