[1] She is professor emeritus of contemporary history at the Claude Bernard University Lyon 1, and former co-director of the semi-annual journal, Clio.

[5] Zancarini-Fournel began her career in 1969 as a secondary school teacher.

Supervised by Yves Lequin [fr], her doctoral thesis in history was titled, Parcours de femmes : réalités et représentations, Saint-Étienne, 1880-1950 (Women's journey: realities and representations, Saint-Étienne, 1880-1950), which she defended in 1988 at Lumière University Lyon 2.

[1] Zancarini-Fournel also specialized in the topic May 68, whose archives she first helped to save,[7] before writing the history of the event.

She also focused on the event in her habilitation dissertation, which was partially published in the book she co-edited 68 : une histoire collective (68: une histoire collective).9.