Staff in French Studies

Professor Helen Abbott is a Professor of Modern Languages, and an arts and humanities advocate with a finance background. Her research into the phonopolitics of modern French poetry and music has been supported by grants from the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy, and the Leverhulme Trust. She is currently an Advisory Board member of the Arts and Humanities Research ...

Dr Caroline Ardrey is a lecturer in French, specialising in nineteenth-century French poetry and its interaction with other art forms and media, in particular music and fashion.

As a researcher, Caroline is Senior Research Associate on The Baudelaire Song Project, directed by Professor Helen Abbottwith Research Associate Dr Nina Rolland. As part of this work, Caroline specialises in ...

I was appointed to the University of Birmingham in 1995. My main areas of interest are all aspects of contemporary French politics and society.

Following undergraduate and postgraduate study at the University of Birmingham, I was appointed to the position of Teaching Fellow in French Studies in September 2011. My specialism is in 20th-century literature and French theatre from the 17th-century onwards.

I am Professor of French Discourses of Sexuality and a specialist in interdisciplinary sexuality and gender studies, critical theory, and the history of diagnostic and cultural concepts. My enduring research interest is in questions of exceptionality, difficulty, and (ab)normality as they are represented and understood in cultural, medical, and political fields. My most recent work has been on ...

Dr Evans is Associate Professor in the Department of Modern Languages. Elliot is the author of Queer Permeability: The Body in French Thought from Wittig to Preciado(2020). Their research is concerned with the varied constructions of sexuality and gender across cultures; with the biopolitical formation of these identities, and the ways in which they are elaborated through writing and visual ...

My specialisms lie in translation, especially audiovisual translation, and writing by French and Francophone women authors. I am the Convenor of the BA Modern Languages Translation Studies pathway.

I first came to Birmingham as a Colloquial Assistant (lectrice), as part of the University’s long-standing exchange with The Université Lumière Lyon 2.  After a few months back in France, I decided to return to Birmingham and the Department of French Studies, again as a Colloquial Assistant.  I have not left since.  

 

I am a specialist of Francophone Studies and World Literature, with a particular interest in the global reception, adaptation circulation and translation of Francophone literature. A published translator, with a growing body of work in Translation Studies, I am fluent in French and German, and am currently learning Spanish.

The majority of my research focuses on the postcolonial literature, film ...

I teach on a variety of language and content modules. I lecture mainly on early-modern French literature and culture, particularly 17th-Century texts, and on 20th-Century writing and film.

My work is on French film and the visual arts, film and feminist theory and philosophy, and sexuality and gender.

My main research interests are Russian émigré literature, interviewing and creative nonfiction, translation as creative writing practice, literary hybridity and translingual creative writing in modern languages.

My research interests revolve around the colonial and post-colonial encounters between European and non-European worlds, in particular in the cultural and political realms. My recent works look at the making of imperial heroes in Britain and France since the era of 'New imperialism' (second half of the nineteenth century), the history of the conquest and decolonization of the Sahara, ...

 I specialise in training students to become translators. I am currently the Head of the School of Languages, Cultures, Art History and Music and prior to that I was the Director of Admissions for the College of Arts and Law.

I came to Birmingham in 2006, and am based in the Department of Modern Languages. Among a range of teaching and research interests, I am particularly keen to promote the study of French literature and the visual arts, and the interactions between them.

I was appointed to the University of Birmingham in 2007, having taught previously at the universities of Bristol and Newcastle. I am a specialist in nineteenth-century French prose fiction, especially the work of Honoré de Balzac. My current research focuses on adaptations of classic novels from this period in a variety of media including silent film, graphic novels, and stage musicals.

I held the Established Chair of French Studies from 1990 to 2011. My research derives from specialist bases in French Studies, but is also cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary. In general, I am interested in the relations of history, politics and narrative form - the operations of ideology in prose fiction, as they manifest themselves in particular texts. In French Studies, I work ...

I have published widely in various genres of Medieval literature: epic, romance and translation from Latin to Medieval French, with a particular interest in the translation by Jean de Meun of the Letters of Abelard and Heloise. Latterly I have been working with Prof Glyn Burgess on publishing editions of Old French narrative lays.

I hold a Personal Chair in French Cultural History. My main research areas are 20th-century Cultural History (especially Jean Paulhan and the Nouvelle Revue française), the life and work of Armand Petitjean, and Franco-British Inter-Cultural Studies, with a particular focus on the French presence in London.

 

I have research interests in Zola’s fiction, French Cinema and  screen adaptation. My publications include studies on Zola, various aspects of the cinema and  together with Ron Hallmark and Ian Pickup, I have published books and articles  on studying in France.

I joined the Department of French in 1973 and taught language and literature at all levels until I retired in 2008.

 

Since I retired I have continued to research into post-World War II  literary narrative: forms of personal and social memory, myth and the everyday with reference to war and post-holocaust culture, with a particular interest in psychoanalytical approaches to trauma and the works of Julien Gracq, Patrick Modiano, J.-M. G. le Clézio and Henry Bauchau.

Since I retired as a Senior Lecturer in the Department, I have been focusing on full-time research into the lives of women in seventeenth-century France.