The Association was created in 1984 and evolved over the years before being named Association François Guizot in 2011 by the descendants of François Guizot. Its goals is to stimulate the studies of his work, particularly intellectual and political of François Guizot but also to enhance the family and institutional archives of Guizot and his family. In 2019, the Association was listed in the directory of learned societies of the CTHS.
The Association provides a framework for systematizing mediation and promotion of this family, historical and intellectual heritage.
- Colloquiums in 1987, 1993 and 2008.
- Creation of the Guizot Prize issued every two years:
- Prix Guizot-Conseil général du Calvados 1994-2012 followed by
- Prix François Guizot-Institut de France since 2014
- François Furet was the first president of the jury until his death in 1997. He was replaced by Jean-Claude Casanova.
- The successive prizes crowned the following laureates: Jacques Krynen, Eric Roussel, Lucien Jaume, Pierre Milza, Mona Ozouf, Simon Leys, Alain Finkielkraut, Arlette Jouanna, Edouard Balladur, Pierre Manent, Jacques Julliard, Alain Besançon, Olivier Grenouilleau, Catherine Maire.
- Valorisation of archives:
- 2002 : Publication of Guizot’s letters to his daughter Henriette
- 2014 : Guizot archives in the Val-Richer deposited in the French National Archives
- 2020 : Digital publication of the first corpus of the correspondence exchanged between François Guizot and Dorothée de Lieven from 1836 to 1856 on the EMAN platform (ITEM / ENS-CNRS). This project is listed in the 2020 Palmarès of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences for the prize of the Foundation for historical and scientific works.
- Digital publications: Another important action from a cultural and historical perspective was the creation in 2008 of the website www.guizot.com gathering documentary content on Guizot, his family and his political and intellectual work. The contents were established mainly by the historian Laurent Theis. The site is regularly enriched and updated by supplementing existing themes and by monitoring scientific and historical work devoted to Guizot and its action.
The territorial anchoring of the Association is achieved through its very strong link with Val-Richer in the town of Saint Ouen le Pin (Calvados). In 1836, François Guizot, minister of public education for Louis-Philippe sought a residence in the constituency of Lisieux where he was elected deputy. He then bought the old abbey of Val-Richer in the Pays d’Auge. The descendants of Guizot founded in 1926 the civil society of Val-Richer to preserve the property.
The Association is open to everyone who is interested by Guizot’s work. For more information: contact@guizot.com