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Updated on: 31/01/2023
Xavier Prévost is a professor of legal history, director of the Montesquieu Research Institute (IRM) and junior member of the Academic Institute of France (IUF). Choosing the University of Bordeaux to start his teaching and research career was a deliberate choice.
Xavier Prévost placed first on the competitive exam for the agrégation in legal history, opening up a position as university professor at six universities and he had to choose; he picked the University of Bordeaux "because of the reputation of its research centre for the history of legal thought, the importance of its faculty of law and political science, and the region's quality of life that my friends from Bordeaux had always bragged about," he explained.
Born in Picardy, he studied law in Paris then in Rennes and at ENS Cachan. He was awarded the agrégation in economics and management in 2006 before starting his thesis in legal history at the University of Lille II the following year.
First, a temporary teaching and research fellow at the University of Paris-Descartes and then at the University of Paris II, he joined the Ecole Nationale des Chartres in 2012.
Appointed university professor in September 2014 when he was 31 years old, he settled in Bordeaux. "I gave my first lecture at the University of Bordeaux in the Aula Magna auditorium in Pessac to nearly a thousand first-year Bachelor-degree students. It was an unforgettable experience".
Xavier Prévost knew very early on that he wanted to study law and be a lecturer-researcher, "an incredible opportunity to be able to learn every day"… In Bordeaux, he has found his place, fits in and feels well regarded, since, in his opinion the university is a driving force in the region.
He also has administrative responsibilities as the director of a laboratory of legal history and political science and is currently a delegate at the Academic Institute of France (IUF).
"My motivation comes from the great freedom I have in the way I carry out my work, in the choice of research and teaching subjects, in the transmission of knowledge and in the exchange with students and colleagues," confided the professor, who also enjoys the opportunities for exchanges and travel made possible via a number of international partnerships that have been set up.
I feel like I really belong to the community, even though I'm not from Bordeaux at all and my educational background is uncommon.
"A huge teaching and research institution, drawing on the diversity of its members, whatever their status. I feel like I really belong to the community, even though I'm not from Bordeaux at all and my educational background is uncommon. I hope that the University of Bordeaux will always be able to put the community of lecturer-researchers and students at the heart of its decisions: a community totally dedicated to knowledge and debate, with high intellectual standards yet open to society."
