Senior Lecturer
A Senior Lecturer with a background in French and German, I teach in French, Comparative Literature and Culture, and Liberal Arts. I was Programme Director of our Liberal Arts degree programmes (2015-2018) and Admissions Tutor (2011-15). I am currenty Deputy Head of the Department for Languages, Literatures and Cultures, part of the School of Humanities.
My research specialism is avant-garde movements of the early 20th Century spanning literature, performance and visual arts, with a focus on gender. My book Dada's Women was published by Yale University Press in 2009 and was shortlisted and commended for the Gapper Prize in 2010. It was widely reviewed. Comments included:
For an update on Dada's Women in the centenary year (2016) read my guest blog hosted by Yale University Press.
My forthcoming book The Poetry of Céline Arnauld: From Dada to Ultra-Modern will be published by Legenda (Research Monographs in French Studies no. 58) in 2020. First brought to light in my book Dada's Women, Arnauld has since been afforded renewed attention in an exhibition ('Die Dada La Dada She Dada', see below) and on stage (Vergessenes Gelächter, Theater Tuchlaube, Aarau, Nov. 2014 - Jan. 2015; Theater National Zürich, June 2016). More recently, her work features in The Great Monster Dada Show at the Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Høvikodden, Norway (25 Oct. 2019 - 26 Jan. 2020).
Museums
Over recent years I have worked regularly with museums in the UK and in Europe, in large part informed by my work on Dada's Women, as well as more broadly by my interests in creative research, teaching and learning.
My activities with arts institutions include:
Multimedia Performance
I am working with the composer and musician Sonia Allori and visual artist Vaia Paziana on a series of collaborative mixed-media productions and interventions based on Dada's Women. We have staged various workshops and performances for different audiences. Please go to our project page for further details.
I have supervised postgraduate work on rebellion in Dada and Surrealist women's art; formal innovation in avant-garde women's writing; 20th century women writers and the city; mythologies in surrealist women's visual works; the marvelous in surrealist women's literary works; postwar Danish feminist art and literature.
I would be pleased to hear from those interested in postgraduate research in 20th Century avant-garde literature, performance and/or fine arts, especially Dada and Surrealism. Interdisciplinary and comparative approaches are especially welcome.
I completed a BA in French and German at the University of Bath, and my MSc and PhD (supported by the AHRC) at the University of Edinburgh as a mature student. I joined Royal Holloway as a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in 2007. Formerly I taught at the Open University and the University of Edinburgh. Prior to academia I led study abroad programmes in Paris, managed distance-learning courses in German, and went to Salamanca to learn Spanish.
Activity: Participating in or organising an event › Participation in conference
Prize: Other distinction
Prize: Prize (including medals and awards)
Prize: Prize (including medals and awards)
Project: Research
ID: 4929