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AFHEA, PhD in French and Francophone Studies, University of Birmingham.

Teaching

At Somerville College, I teach French Language, Francophone literature, Prose, Orals and Essay. I teach English-French translation for first-, second- and final-year students in addition to Orals, Essay and first-year grammar. I also teach Paper XI (Assia Djebar).

Research

My research interests revolve around colonial and postcolonial encounters between France and North Africa and the literary productions that emanate from these encounters. My PhD in French and Francophone Studies reads Algerian identity from the prism of the Sahara. It posits the Sahara Desert as an accurate analytical prism through which we can understand complex paradigms related to cultural identities in Algeria, and North Africa in general. I am interested in researching how colonial encounters in spaces like the Sahara shape and make visible, but also invisible different memories, histories and identities. More broadly, I am interested in 20th and 21st century French and Algerian literature, and I am currently researching the imprint of imperial legacies on postcolonial societies and how the latter resist but also perpetuate the colonial tropes in literary writing.

My latest article entitled 'La jouissance de la liberté et du pouvoir des femmes : Sur les traces d’Isabelle Eberhardt dans les œuvres de Malika Mokeddem' interrogates the place of nineteenth-century European women travelers such as Isabelle Eberhardt on the contemporary productions of Francophone authors such as Malika Mokeddem. It highlights the intersection between language, culture and the development of nomadic writing whose chief principle is mobility, both in writing and navigating the imposed or imaginary borders of the North African territory.

Publications

  • (2024). « La jouissance de la liberté et du pouvoir des femmes : Sur les traces d’Isabelle Eberhardt dans Le Siècle des Sauterelles (1992) de Malika Mokeddem. » Viatica [En ligne], 11 | 2024 http://journals.openedition.org/viatica/3621
  •  (2023) ‘Remembering the Colonial Past in Algerian Literature’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 51:5, 974-994, DOI: 10.1080/03086534.2023.2262321.
  • (2023) « Un métier souvent oublié dans les régions sahariennes : l’écrivain, trait d’union entre le Sahara et l’identité Algérienne » Sahara & Sahel La Rahla.
  • (2021) ‘Showcasing Emptiness? Voicing Redemption Through ‘Saharomania’ in the French Literary Imaginary.’ Showcasing Empire, Then and Now: Material Culture, Propaganda and the Imperial Project. Cahiers Victoriens et Édouadiens 93 https://journals.openedition.org/cve/8859
  • Accepted for publication (due Spring 2024). ‘On the traces of the roumia: the nostalgic remembering of Isabelle Eberhardt in Malika Mokeddem’s fiction.’ Liverpool University Press.