[2] Kalifa was professor at the University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne and director of the Centre of 19th Century History,[3][4] and a member of the Institut universitaire de France.

A student of Michelle Perrot, he specialised in the history of crime, transgression, social control, and mass culture in 19th and early 20th century France and Europe.

His study about the underworld and its role in the Western imagination is now translated into Portuguese (EDUSP), Spanish (Instituto Mora) and forthcoming in English (Columbia University Press).

His Véritable Histoire de la Belle Epoque, published in 2017, won the Eugène Colas Prize from the Académie française.

[6] In English : "Crime Scenes: Criminal Topography and Social Imaginary in Nineteenth Century Paris", French Historical Studies, vol.