Albert-Alain Bourdon is the son of the French historian and professor Léon Bourdon, who served as director of the Institut d’Études Portugaises et Brésiliennes [Institute of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies] at the Sorbonne from 1953 to 1969. His mother, Hélène Marie-Louise Bourdon, was a primary school teacher. Albert-Alain spent his early years in Lisbon, where his father was director of the Institut français au Portugal [French Institute in Portugal]. He began his primary education in Poitiers, France, before his family moved to Toulouse, where he completed his primary schooling as well as his middle and high school studies. It was also in this city in south-west France that Albert-Alain Bourdon earned his degrees in History and Law (1949–1952), before moving to Paris to complete a master’s degree in the same fields at the Sorbonne (1953–1955). He then prepared for the Agrégation , the most prestigious and demanding recruitment competition for middle and secondary school teachers in the French education system. In 1958, he successfully passed the History and Geography exam. That same year, he was called up for military service, which lasted until 1961 and was divided between Lyon and a posting in Algiers, Algeria, during the final phase of the Algerian War of Independence. Upon returning to France, he began his career as a secondary school history and geography teacher, working in various locations in central and southeastern France. In 1963, he took up a teaching post at the Lycée Français Charles Lepierre in Lisbon, where he worked until 1966. During this time, he also began teaching French civilisation at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities and was appointed Reader in French in 1966. In 1969, he left Portugal to become an associate professor of civilisation and modern and contemporary Lusophone literature at the Université de Provence-Aix-Marseille. He was promoted to full professor there in 1978 before moving to the Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis in 1988, where he remained until his retirement in 1998.

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