Born in 1964, Paul Dietschy is a graduate of the École normale supérieure de Fontenay-Saint-Cloud and holds a doctorate in history. He is currently Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Franche-Comté, member of the Centre Lucien Febvre and editor of the journal Football(s). Histoire, culture économie, société. Following his doctoral thesis in history, Football et société à Turin 1920-1960 (Université Lumière Il 1997), he specialized in the history of sport, soccer and contemporary Italy. He has worked extensively in the FIFA archives in Zurich, which provided material for the book he co-authored with David-Claude Kémo-Keimbou, Le Football et L'Afrique, Paris, EPA, 2008 and Histoire du soccer, Paris, Perrin, 2008 (revised and expanded Tempus 2014). He also worked on sport and the Great War for his habilitation to direct research defended in 2012 before the IEP de Paris, where he co-hosted a seminar at the Centre d'histoire de Sciences Po on the history of sport from 2004 to 2022. He has also published, with Stefano Pivato, Storia dello sport in Italia (Il Mulino, 2019). Since 2023, he and Dietmar Hüser of the University of Saarbrücken have been co-sponsors of the ANR-DFG ARENES Les Arènes du sport : scènes et fabrique(s) du corps.
Paul Dietschy is a guest speaker at the 2024 " Les Jeux au Collège de France " lecture series.