I am a specialist in 20th and 21st century French literature and thought. I have widely published on questions of mourning in Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Pascal Quignard and Pierre Michon. My doctoral research has branched out into several lines of enquiry. Situated at the crossroads of cultural, memory and trauma studies, they hinge around questions of memory, the construction of history and the relation between fiction and history. My research on subjectivity and mourning has led me to look at how national narratives are shaped by cultural mourning, in particular the Vichy period. My current work on the migrant crisis has looked at issues of hospitality, responsibility and grievability whilst my recent work on the 2015 Paris attacks has concerned itself with the representation of trauma, national narratives and the possible roles of transitional and restorative justice
I am a research fellow at the Maison Française d’Oxford where I have convened a number of conferences on French literature and its interdisciplinary crossings as well as outreach events with French authors. My contributions include book discussions, in particular, with French author Delphine de Vigan (co-organised with Blackwells, April 2017), a round-table discussion on Brexit, community and literature (MFO, June 2022), participating in the scientific committees of conferences, namely ‘Utopia and Migration: Renewing the Imagination of Borders in the 21st century’ (MFO, April 2021) and ‘Bodies on the Edge: Life and Death in Migration (MFO, April 2022).
More importantly, I have convened two conferences on the work of Michel Serres. ‘Michel Serres: Thinking beyond boundaries' (MFO, June 2022) has given rise to a special issue of the same title published by Parrhesia. The proceedings of the second conference I convened in this series, ‘Michel Serres and Bruno Latour in conversation’ (May 2024) has been accepted for publication as a special issue with French Studies (scheduled for April 2027).
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Michel Serres: Thinking Beyond Borders, ed. by Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and Henriette Korthals Altes Parrhesia, Volume 40 (December 2024)
V13: Chronicle of a Trial by Emmanuel Carrère review – a humane and thoughtful testimony of terror and loss, The Observer, (3 November 2024)
“‘Of a functional value of the idea of God’: Michel Serres, religion and the beauty of mathematics” in in Parrhesia, Volume 40 (December 2024)
Resilience, Resistance: the collective mourning of the 2015 November attacks in En Thérapie in Saison: La Revue des Séries (Paris: Classiques-Garnier, September 2024)
‘Fiction as Legal Authority? Orwell, Snowden, and State Cyber-Surveillance’ in Can Fiction Change the World, ed. by Alison James, Françoise Lavocat and Kubo Akihiro (Oxford: Legenda, 2023), pp. 177-190
‘Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida and the gift of tears: beyond mourning and melancholia’ in Variations on the Ethics of Mourning in Modern Literature in French (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2021) ed. by Carole Bourne-Taylor and Sara-Louise Cooper, with an introduction by Dominique Rabaté, pp. 129-15
‘When dance meets texts: Pascal Quignard’s Medea’, Revue Le Sans Visage 2 (2021) Saint-Louis University Press, ed. by Jean-Louis Pautrot