Ruth Cruickshank

EDI and social purpose are central to my research, teaching and administration. I am the only Humanities scholar worldwide working on OSFED (other specified feeding and eating disorders) the most prevalent eating disorder, yet astoundingly little known, under-researched and under-resourced. I have developed an interdisciplinary network of scholars spanning creative practice; health humanities, ethnography and clinical psychology of eating disorders to identify and challenge the mechanisms of the biomedical silencing of OSFED and elucidate cross-population experiences of this overlooked yet growing health crisis (OSFED is just as serious as better known eating disorders). I am a consultant for Beat, the UK’s major eating disorder charity providing research-led responses to media enquiries and advising on their communications materials and webpages. This work has evolved as an ethical imperative through lived experience and out of my transdisciplinary research is at the nexus of literary and cultural criticism and modern languages, health humanities, comparative and food studies, exploring questions of production and consumption: of texts, of food and drink, and of the critical potential of representations of them.

I serve on the university’s Disability Equality Group. I am LLC Community and Inclusion Lead (2023- ); was Director of Student Experience for the School of Humanities (2022-23) before that role was curtailed in the School; and departmental Senior Tutor (2019-21). A Reader in French and Comparative Literature and Culture, I design, convene and teach modules across Comparative Literature and Culture, Liberal Arts and French (including translation). I have been awarded three RHUL Teaching Prizes/Commendations, all involving EDI initiatives.  My latest research-led innovations are for Liberal Arts LA1000 ‘Encounters with Food and Power’ and the LLC-wide second- and final-year option ‘Twenty-first-century World Food Fictions: Feeding Interdisciplinary: Understandings of Identity Constructs’.

I embarked on postgraduate education in 1999, bringing ten years’ professional skills as a translator and as a Group Account Director in international marketing and advertising following my first degree in French with Italian (Leeds 1989). I achieved a distinction in my MSt in European Literatures (Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford; 2000), and my AHRB-funded DPhil in French was awarded 2004 (Hastings Senior Scholar, The Queen’s College, Oxford). Before joining Royal Holloway in 2006 as Lecturer in French, I was Kathleen Bourne Junior Research Fellow at St Anne’s College and Stipendiary Lecturer in French at The Queen’s College, Oxford.

• Identifying and challenging the narrative and cultural constructs behind the  the biomedical silencing of OSFED (other specified feeding or eating disorder) and elucidating cross-population experiences of this overlooked yet growing health crisis (see my recent article).
• The critical potential of representations of food and drink in fiction, film and though e.g., Leftovers: Eating, Drinking and Rethinking with Cases Studies from Post-war French Fiction’s : ‘wide-ranging implications’; ‘essential reading’; ‘at a time when governments and academic institutions are asking scholars to demonstrate interdisciplinarity […] provides a sort of justificatory roadmap’; ‘a model for a wide-scale reassessment’ (Gastronomica) This January 2020 volume was released in paperback January 2023.
• French and transnational food cultures.
• Consumer culture and globalization in post-war French fiction, film and thought.
• Turn-of-the-millemium French fiction and thought: e.g. Fin de millénaire French Fiction: The Aesthetics of Crisis: ‘meticulous and well-informed work that deftly brings together four contemporary authors’: ‘making visible the tension of contemporary intellectual history and literary history through the lens of the literary text itself, as it reflects on these issues. And the primary text of fiction is there, extensively cited and topically commented, giving rise to subtle accounts’; ‘a brilliantly informed analysis of the 'long twentieth-century', concentrating on the last twenty years’; and  ‘a combination of impressive research and remarkably clear synthesis’.
• Post-war twentieth- and twenty-first French fiction and thought (notably Houellebecq and Ernaux, France’s two most famous living writers, and Angot, Beauvoir, Duras, Echenoz and Redonnet) e.g. co-edited volume: ‘an important contribution to our understanding of the modern, avant-garde and postmodern writing in French’.
• French film (of the Trente glorieuses, Chomet, Denis, Moullet and Varda). 

Undergraduate Teaching

• I joined Royal Holloway to teach post-War French literature, film and thought and advanced translation.
• I also spearheaded the development of RHUL’s unique Comparative Literature and Culture BA programmes, of which I was Progamme Director 2012-21, most recently developing World Literatures strands.
• I also develop teaching and learning for and teach on the Modern Languages, Liberal Arts and Translation Studies BA programmes, and the Integrated Foundation Year.

Postgraduate Supervision

• I supervise PhD and Masters by Research students of French and of Comparative Literature and Culture working often in interdisciplinary ways on post-war and contemporary literary and visual cultures, as well as on food cultures and postcolonial issues of consumption and globalization. 
• I also mentor ECRs: Matt Phillips, Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship, Depressive Texts: Mental Well-Being and the Modern French Novel'. January 2019-June 2022.

Teaching and Pastoral Prizes and Awards

• College Team Teaching Prize: Commendation, 2020.
• Educational Support Award for Outstanding Individual, 2015.
• Educational Support Award for Outstanding Individual, 2014.               
• Student Union ‘Apple for the Teacher’ Excellence Prize, 2011.
• College Team Teaching Prize, 2009.
• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, 2009.

•  Thinking & Writing: Academic/EDI consultant for HEI e-learning course, 2020-.
• Society of Authors (I am the only French Studies academic to judge the Scott Moncrieff Prize for translation twice in the last 12 years), impacting publishing, translation and bookselling industries, and the general public. With Francophone novelist judges (Jacob Ross and Michèle Roberts) drew up shortlists spanning genders, ethnicities and genres form which to select winners and runners-up.  As I told BBC World Service’s ‘The Newsroom’, and the Bookseller,  our 2018 winner is the Society’s first graphic novel translation prize awardee, a text raising awareness of domestic violence and boosting the profile and accessibility of literature in translation
• Consultant for BBC4: ‘France on a plate’.
• Language advisor and translator: ITV Murder on the Orient Express.

External

• AHRC Peer Review College.
• TECHNE Peer Review College/CDA.
• Chartered Linguist: Chartered Institute of Linguists.
• Editorial Board: French Cultural Studies.
• International Advisory Board: French Cultural Studies, 2015-19.
• Honorary Treasurer: Society for French Studies 2015-2018.
• Steering Committee: LINKS London Intercollegiate Network for Comparative Literature, (Chair 2015-16; 2018-19). 
• National Association of Disabled Staff Networks.
• Centre for Contemporary Women’s Writing, IMLR, London. 
• Global Cities and Visual Culture (Universities of Amsterdam, Edinburgh, QMUL, RHUL).
• British Association for Comparative Literature.
• Society for French Studies.

Internal

• Food Group, Founder Member (Steering Group).
• Humanities Representative, Living Sustainably Catalyst.
• Advisory Group, Living Sustainably Catalyst.
• Disability and Mental Health Staff Network.
• Humanities Illness and Disability Reading Group.
• RHUL Humanities EDI Reading Group        
• Centre for Visual Cultures RHUL (Steering Committee).
• Centre for GeoHumanities RHUL.
• Centre for the Body and Material Culture, RHUL.

External Engagement and Knowledge Exchange

Awareness raising, charity collaboration and campaigning on eating disorders

• Prominent Twitter presence foregrounding OSFED: Other Specified Feeding and Eating Disorders, the most prevalent but least well-known eating disorder (and other eating disorder/ mental health issues).
• Relationship building with CEO and clinical lead of national eating disorder charity Beat and Manager of local eating disorder charity Seed.
• Training: March-May 2021 (Beat), ‘Introduction to Campaigning’; The Changes we are Campaigning For’; ‘Getting Your Voice Heard in the Political System’; June 2021, ‘Getting Your Voice Heard in the Health Services’; July 2021 (Seed), Toolkit Webinar.

 Charity collaboration using critical questioning of French food for social capital building 

• Invited blog for high profile ‘Lockdown Series’ for Registered Charity, The Rimbaud and Verlaine Foundation, ‘Leftovers in Lockdown: From Literary Haunts to Re-thinking Eating and Drinking in French Thought’, 20/7/2020 .
• Co-organiser and Speaker - Public Engagement Restaurant Pop-up with Registered Charity The Rimbaud and Verlaine Foundation, ‘Revolutions in French Food’, 3/12/16, London.
• Invited Panellist - ‘Frogs and Snails’, Westminster Difference Festival, University of Westminster, 26/2/18.
• BBC4, France on a Plate, Consultant, 2008.

 Promoting inclusion, diversity and accessibility via uptake of literature in translation

• Judge - Society of Authors/Scott Moncrieff Prize for Translation, 2018 and 2010 (2018: Awarded the Society’s first ever translation prize for a graphic novel).
• Moderator: Institut Français de Londres Book Club, Bonjour Tristesse, 19/6/14.

 Boosting Secondary MFL/Literature teaching via teacher CPD 

• Plenary Lectures for Prince’s Teaching Institute Newly-qualified Teachers Days, London, 21/11/15; 29/11/14; 30/11/13 and Manchester, 7/12/13l  CPD Day, London, 30/11/12.
• Co-organiser and Speaker x 2 Literature Study Days, RHUL 2017
• Organiser - Comparative Literature and Culture Year 12 Art Writing Competition 2015 and 2014.
• Organiser - x 2 Year 5 Routes into Languages Days, 2014.

Recent Invited Papers at International Conferences/Symposia 

•  'Enduring post-war (eating) disorder: re-reading Elsa Triolet’s food insecurity and the psychopathologies of the Trente glorieuses' at, Occupation and Resistance, Crime Fiction and Memory : A Day Symposium in Honour of Margaret Atack, ICLS, London, 18/10/24.
• 'Raising Difficult OSFED Questions: What/How/Why/Where Don’t We (Who?) Know About Other Specified Feeding and Eating Disorders', at MRC-UKRI-funded For UKRI/ MRC-funded Rethinking Eating Disorders: Webinar Series, University of Birmingham, 12/12/23.
• Opening Paper: In Defence of Radical Inquiry in Comparative Literature, Translation and the Study of Languages, LINKS, 13/6/22.
• Keynote: ‘The Critical Consumption of Leftovers’ at Launch: Centre for French, Francophone and Comparative Studies, Birkbeck, 18/3/22
• 'Fishes with Funny French Names: The French Restaurant in London from the Nineteenth to the Twenty-First Century’ at HOMELandS (Hub On Migration, Exile, Languages and Spaces), University of Westminster,10/3/22
• Houellebecq’s Dead Meat?: (Inter)textual Consumption and Carno-phallogocentrism in La Carte et le territoire’, at Houellebecq in Focus, Villanova University USA,20/3/21.

• ‘Feeding Flore-less Literary Posterity?: Playing with intertexts in La Carte et le territoire’, Houellebecq’s Cultural Transgressions, IMLR, London, 29/9/19.

• ‘Who’s Messed Up? Women Writing and Thinking about Food in Late-capitalist France’, Centre for the Study of Contemporary Women’s Writing, School of Advanced Study, University of London, 1/12/17. 

Other Papers at International Conferences/Symposia (last 5 years)

• ‘Leftovers and Lockdown: Re-thinking Eating with French Thought’, at 20th/21st-century French and Francophone Studies: An International Colloquium, Georgetown University. USA, 12/3/21.
• ‘Houellebecq, UNESCO and the Future of France: Bad Food Fictions and Questionable Cures’, Society for French Studies, Cork, Republic of Ireland, 2/7/18.

UK Invited Contributions to Symposia/Roundtables/Workshop (last 5 years)

• 'Inclusive Teaching’, at Women in German Studies Online Teaching Development Day, 8/10/21.
• ‘La France ce n’est pas Michel Houellebecq’, Modern & Contemporary France Special Issue Launch, Goldsmiths, 14/2/19
• ‘Leftover Readings: Eating, Drinking and Rethinking Fiction from Robbe-Grillet to Houellebecq’, Cambridge Modern French Research Seminar, 13/2/17.

Internal Contributions to Symposia/Workshops/Roundtables (last 5 years)

• ‘Hot Chocolate: At What Cost?’, at COP26Forum: Sustainable Eating on Campus: A Long View, Royal Holloway, 9/11/21.
• ‘Counting Thanks’, at Celebrating the Work of Colin Davis: A Symposium, Royal Holloway, 6/7/21.
• ‘Ambivalent Food Thought: Tell Me What You (Don't) Eat and I Will Tell You What You Are (Not)’, at Unpalatable, Inedible and Indigestible: Exploring Boundaries, Constructs and Communities in Human Food Practices, Royal Holloway, 19/5/21.
• Leftovers’ at Brief Interdisciplinary Encounters: Food, Royal Holloway, 12/10/20.

Conference/Seminar Organisation

• Co-organiser (with Liz Schafer, Drama; Celia Martin-Puertas, Geography; and Jonathan Howe, Head of External Space), COP26 Forum: Eco Walk, Talk and Question, Royal Holloway, 8/11/21.
• Co-organiser (with Judith Hawley, English), COP26 Forum, Food and Drink on the Brink: Sustainable Eating on Campus: A Long View, Royal Holloway, 9/11/21.
• Co-organiser (with Bob Eaglestone, English; and Jon Hughes, Danielle Sands, Sarah Wright, LLC), Celebrating the Work of Colin Davis: A Symposium, Royal Holloway, 6/7/21.
• Co-organiser (with Judith Hawley, English; Andrew Jotischky, History; Stella Moss, History; Erica Rowan, Classics), Unpalatable, Inedible and Indigestible: Exploring Boundaries, Constructs and Communities in Human Food Practices’/Two-day Scoping Symposium, Royal Holloway, 19-20/5/21’
•  ‘Keywords in World-Literary Studies: The "Collective”’, Prof Pablo Mukherjee, LINKS (The London Intercollegiate Network for Comparative Studies), IMLR, 6/11/18.
• ‘Cosmopolitanism' LINKS Sixth PG conference’ (The London Intercollegiate Network for Comparative Studies), 4/6/16.
• ‘Creating Creative Criticism with Dr Stephen Benson and Dr Clare Connors’, LINKS (The London Intercollegiate Network for Comparative Studies), 16/2/16.
• ‘Digesting Texts: Comparative Approaches to Food’, Roundtable and discussion, LINKS,(The London Intercollegiate Network for Comparative Studies), 20/1/15
•  ‘The Value of Eating: Roundtable on Food Value and Gender: Mediated Consumption, Anxiety and Potentiality’, at HARC Dialogues, Science Museum, London, 13/3/14. http://backdoorbroadcasting.net/2014/03/food-value-and-gender-mediated-consumption-anxiety-and-potentiality/
• ‘Beyond the Global City: Visual, Verbal and Virtual Experiences, International Colloquium’,London, 20-21/5/11. Open to scholars public and public and postgraduates, includes public podcast: http://beyondtheglobalcity.wordpress.com/
• ‘ RHUL Christmas Arts Faculty Seminar: Feasting: Eating Drinking and Re-thinking’, six specialist speakers followed by a roundtable with academics, food professionals, bloggers and TV producers disseminated by public podcast.
• ‘Contemporary Women’s Writing in French: Recent Fiction’, 7 March 2009: organised speakers, logistics, funding and real-time and recorded public podcast.