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) Future Leaders Fellowships (FLF) Scheme and the British Academy's Knowledge Frontiers Programme: International Interdisciplinary Research Projects.
I am Assistant Editor of French Studies Bulletin. I am also on the executive committee of ADEFFI (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 Society for French Studies, the Association for the Study of Modern and Contemporary France (ASMCF) and the Association for Medical Humanities. I am also a member of the International Health Humanities Network.
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 |