Research Interests
Open to PhD applications in:
- French Studies and the Critical Medical Humanities;
- Post-1789 French literature on health, illness, pathology, disability, pain, end of life;
- Literary and cultural representations of medical practice, care and experience;
- Interactions between medicine/science and gender, race, religion, (post-)colonialism and/or ecology/environmental humanities in modern and contemporary French literature, thought or culture.
Public outreach & key achievements
From April 2018 - January 2019 I was an AHRC Leadership Fellow working on a project entitled Global Disease: Language(s) and the Literary Imagination.
Along with Prof. Pascal McKeown (School of Medicine, Dentistry and Biomedical Sciences), I was project leader of the QUB Health Humanities interdisciplinary research network in 2014-15. I am currently a Member of the Peer-Review Committee for the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Scheme and the British Academy's .
I am Assistant Editor of . I am also on the executive committee of (L'Association des études françaises et francophones d'Irlande) and am a member of the Society of Dix-neuviémistes (having served on the Society's executive as Membership Secretary from 2012-15 and again in 2016-17), the , the and the . I am also a member of the .
My research has been funded by the AHRC (Leadership Fellowship), the British Academy, the MHRA and the Institute of Languages, Cultures and Societies (ILCS). I am an advisor to the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and collaborate in a range of international scholarly networks, including as a member of the Advisory Board of Loire Val-Health, an €11.8M research project based at the Université de Tours. Having led multidisciplinary research projects across languages, cultures and societies, I am committed to public engagement on the importance of multilingualism and intercultural knowledge in global healthcare, including through policy work.
I am a member of the Editorial Board of Modern and Contemporary France, an internationally prominent peer-reviewed journal offering a multidisciplinary view of all aspects of France from 1789 to the present day, and a member of the Executive Committee of the Society for French Studies (SFS), the longest-established and largest association in French Studies.
Research students
| PhD area | "Les parents boivent, les enfants trinquent": Adolescent Perspectives on Parental Alcoholism in Contemporary French Literature |
| Name |
Lauren McShane |
| Years of study | 2022 - 2026 |
| Country | Northern Ireland |
| PhD area | Neuroqueering French Literature from Flaubert to Wittig (1857-1985) |
| Name | Alice Hagopian |
| Years of study | 2023 - 2027 |
| Country | France |
| PhD area | Representing Postpartum Mental Illness in French Literature |
| Name | Eve Devlin |
| Years of study | 2022 - 2026 |
| Country | Northern Ireland |
Alumni: Where are they now
| PhD area | Loss and Mourning in Contemporary, Parental Récits de deuil |
| Name |
Jordan McCullough |
| Years of study | 2019 - 2023 |
| Country | Northern Ireland |
| Current Position | Postdoctoral Research Assistant on a major European Research Council project at the University of St Gallen, Switzerland |
| PhD area | The Descendants of Eve: Rewriting the Fall in Nineteenth-Century French Literature |
| Name | Jayne Duff |
| Years of study | 2019 - 2022 |
| Country | Northern Ireland |
| Current Position | Research Fellow in the School of Social Sciences, Education and Social Work, QUB, assisting with research on the British Council's Language Trends for England, Northern Ireland and Wales |
| PhD area | Religious Imagery in Nineteenth-Century French Slavery Narratives |
| Name | Helen McKelvey |
| Years of study | 2018 - 2021 |
| Country | Northern Ireland |
| Current Position | Lecturer in French in the School of Modern Languages and Cultures, University of Glasgow |