Trained in sociology and history, Gérard Bouchard has published his first book in Paris in 1972 : Le Village immobile : Sennely-en-Sologne au XVIIIe siècle (Plon). It is an essay in social history targeting a village of the Sologne region, in central France. Back to Quebec, he launched a huge social history project on the Saguenay region, located in North-Eastern Quebec and opened to settlement in the 1830s. One of the major goal of the project was to build a computerized population register to support the 125,000 reconstituted families of this regional population between 1838 and 1971. Over the years, the project has generated numerous articles and collections of essays, culmunating in 1996 in the publication of a synthesis book : Quelques arpents d’Amérique. Population, économie, famille au Saguenay, 1838-1971 (Montreal, Boréal).

The population register (called BALSAC) also gave birth to various research programs in the field of social history, historical demography, cultural studies, and human genetics (population genetics, genetic epidemiology). The various collaborations established through these research projects led to the creation of the Interuniversity Institute for Population Research (IREP), based on seven universities which Gérard Bouchard has headed until 1998. So, for twenty years, his research activities have covered many fields and disciplines from social history and historical demography to cultural history and human genetics.

He has left in 2010 the direction of the BALSAC Project, whose main objective is to cover the hole of the Quebec population since the begining of the settlement in the 17th century up to the recent years. He is now concentrating his research activities in the field of culture, particularly the comparative analysis of collective imaginaries. In 2002 he became holder of a Canada Research Chair in this area (recent publications : Genèse des nations et cultures du Nouveau Monde. Essai d’histoire comparée (2000); Les deux chanoines. Contradiction et ambivalence dans la pensée de Lionel Groulx (2003); Raison et contradiction. Le mythe au secours de la pensée (2003); La pensée impuissante. Échecs et mythes nationaux canadiens-français (1850-1960) (2004); with Alain Roy, La culture québécoise est-elle en crise ? (2007); with Bernard Andrès (eds.), Mythes et sociétés des Amériques (2007); with Charles Taylor, Building the Future. A Time for Reconciliation, Report of the Consultation Commission on Accommodation Practices Related to Cultural Differences, Gouvernement du Québec (2008); L’interculturalisme. Un point de vue québécois (2012)). In parallel, he also published three novels: Mistouk (2002), Pikauba (2005) and Uashat (2009)).

Since Fall 2002, G. Bouchard is a fellow of the Successful Societies Program of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR).He is now a member of the Advisory Committee of the Program.