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I am a DPhil candidate from Australia. Before coming to Oxford, I completed a Bachelor of Arts/Languages at the University of Sydney, majoring in both French and Italian, followed by an Honours Degree for which my thesis, written in French, was awarded the University Medal.  It analysed the politics and ethics of intertextuality between Albert Camus's L'Étranger (1942) and a contemporary postcolonial "rewriting" of the canonical work by Kamel Daoud, entitled Meursault, contre-enquête (2014). I have also spent some time studying at Sciences Po, Paris in 2015. 

 

Current Research

My doctoral project investigates the ‘spectrality of intertextuality’ in contemporary francophone Algerian writing. Mobilising Jacques Derrida’s theory of hauntologie, wherein the figure of the spectre incarnates ambivalence, liminality, and epistemological instability, my focus is two-fold. I am interested not only in how phantomatic imagery is being used to ‘exorcise’ a deeply traumatic colonial history, but, moreover, in how conceiving of literature and storytelling as inherently spectral and non-fixed artforms can present a challenge to overbearing state narratives and religious dogma that risk imposing a singular, restrictive version of history and identity onto a population. Analysing works written since the decade-long civil war of the 1990s (by writers mostly born after Independence), my thesis posits literary haunting as an increasingly future-focused phenomenon, evolving from representing buried trauma from the colonial past to symbolising anxieties and warnings about post-independent futures. Furthermore, I examine what the growing postcolonial trend of ‘rewriting’ classic works – from the French, Arabic, and English canons – can reveal about Algeria’s changing concerns as it moves further and further away from its colonial past.

My wider academic interests include 20th and 21st century French and Francophone Thought, in particular: World Literature; North African and Caribbean writing; postcolonial theory; Deconstructionism; notions of the ‘postsecular’; Memory and Migration Studies; Existentialism and Absurdist philosophy; women's writing; autofiction; and islamogauchisme.

 

Teaching

Stipendiary Lecturer in French, Somerville College (Michaelmas 2023) 

Tutor in Francophone Literatures for Stanford House, Stanford University partnership in Oxford (2023)

Graduate Development Scholar/Academic Tutor (St Anne's College, MML Faculty 2020-24)

Prelims:

  • Paper II: Translation (2021-22, 2022-23)
  • Paper III: Montaigne, Racine, Verlaine, NDiaye (2023)
  • Paper IV: Maryse Condé (2022, 2023)
  • Paper XII: French Literary Theory - Sole Prelims (2021, 2022)

Final Honours School:

  • Paper II: Translation (to & from French, 2020-21, 2023)
  • Paper VIII: Modern French Literature (range of francophone topics spanning the Maghreb, Caribbean, West Africa, 2021-22, 2024)
  • Paper XI: Special Author - Assia Djebar (2020, 2021, 2022)
  • Paper XII: Advanced Translation - Theory and Practice (2024)
  • Paper XIV: Dissertation (2023) - I have supervised undergraduate dissertations on Caribbean Literature and Magical Realism in the Maghreb

I am also lecturing on Camus and Algeria as part of the Graduate Lecture Scheme (2022, 2023)

 

Outreach and Admissions

Oxford High School 'Inspires' Mentor (2023-4) - I supervise Yr 12 Extended Research Projects and run a series of masterclasses on the French Empire and decolonisation, entitled 'French or Francophone? An Introduction to Postcolonial Poet(h)ics'.

I have run Academic 'Taster' Sessions for Sixth Form students at Study Days (Exeter College, May 2022)

Undergraduate Admissions Interviewer 2020, 2021, 2022 (Exeter, St Anne's)

'Subject specialist supervisor' for Waynflete Project, Magdalen School College (2020)

 

Publications

‘The Thousand and One Ghosts: Stories as Revenants in Salim Bachi’s Amours et aventures de Sindbad le marin’, Australian Journal of French Studies, Special Issue on ‘Mo(u)vement’ (forthcoming 2024)

'Writing the Black Decade: Conflict and Criticism in Francophone Algerian Literature by Joseph Ford' (review). Modern and Contemporary France 31.1, March 2023 (published online 20 July 2022), pp. 124-125. DOI: 10.1080/09639489.2022.2098938

‘David Diop on Création littéraire et poétique de la voix’, The Oxford Polyglot, 2023-2024, Issue 2, https://www.mod-langs.ox.ac.uk/oxford-polyglot/2023-24/2/david-diop-literary-creation-and-poetics-voice 

 

Selected Papers & Presentations

'The Body as Book: Literary (and Literal) Possession in Kamel Daoud's Zabor ou les psaumes' (2017), Australian Society for French Studies Conference, University of Sydney, 6-8 December 2023

'The Writer as Prophet, Saviour, or Scapeghost? Storytelling and the Postsecular in Kamel Daoud', British Comparative Literature Association ECR Conference, University of Warwick, 12-13 October 2023

'Contre l'identité nationale? Les spectres interculturels et intertextuels dans l'oeuvre de Salim Bachi', Congrès mondial du CIÉF, Hammamet (Tunisia), 19-25 June 2023 

'Spectral Storytelling and the Role of the Writer in Kamel Daoud's Zabor ou les psaumes', Oxford Modern French Research Seminar, Maison Française d'Oxford, 18 May 2023

'Stories as Revenants in Contemporary Algerian Francophone Literature', The Society for French Studies Annual Conference, Queen's University Belfast, June 2022

'Ghostly Encounters Between Texts Across Time: Rewriting and Retelling in Salim Bachi's Amours et aventures de Sindbad le marin (2010)', Society for the Study of French History Annual Conference: Rencontres, Exeter College, University of Oxford, 10-13 April 2022

« La vie est dans le mouvement perpétuel des hommes et des idées » : Transnational storytelling in the work of Salim Bachi’,  Australian Society for French Studies Annual Conference on 'Mo(u)vement', 12-14 December 2022, Victoria University Wellington, New Zealand (online)

'Contre contre-enquête? La Spectralité de l'intertextualité dans Meursault, contre-enquête par Kamel Daoud', ASMCF & SSFH Postgraduate Conference at Queen's University Belfast, 7 March 2020 (online)

'Réécrire L'Étranger « de droite à gauche »: Le spectre de Camus et du patrimoine littéraire français en Algérie', French Graduate Research Seminar, All Souls College, University of Oxford, March 2020

 

Academic Prizes and Awards

  • Prix Jeune Chercheur, Conseil International d'Études Francophones 2023
  • St Anne's College Graduate Development Scholarship 2021-23
  • The Society for the Study of French History's ECR Support Grant 2021
  • Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy 2021
  • University of Sydney Medal 2017 ( for best thesis in the School of Languages and Cultures and a final mark of over 90% across the Honours course) 
  • Margaret Ann Bailey Memorial Prize for Honours in a Modern European Language 2017
  • Emilie M. Schweitzer Honours Scholarship for French Studies 2017
  • Helen Simpson Prize for French 2017
  • Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences' Walter Reid Memorial Prize 2013
  • Anne Bates Memorial Scholarship for French 2013
  • Countess E. M Freehill Prize No. 1 for Italian 2012
  • University of Sydney Academic Merit Prize 2012