About
I joined the University of Liverpool in 2021 as a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow (2019-2023) and as a Lecturer in French (since March 2023), having previously worked at the Universities of St Andrews, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Bristol and Yale University. My research focuses on the histories, texts, and visual cultures produced during and in the aftermath of Belgian and French colonialism. I have a broad range of research interests, from environmental history and Environmental Humanities more broadly (especially Critical Animal Studies), via the histories of transnational far-right politics to ideas of Francophone African writing as 'world literature'. I welcome MRes and PhD enquiries in any of those areas mentioned above.
I'm currently running two research projects, 'Re-valuing Local Knowledges: Understanding Voice, Land and Power for Climate Action in Eastern DRC' (funded by a British Academy ODA Challenge-Oriented Research Grant, 2024-25) with my Co-Investigators Prof. Emery Mudinga (Institut Supérieur de Développment Rural, Bukavu, DRC), Dr Bonaventure Munganga (University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia), Dr Blake Ewing (University of Nottingham, UK) and Dr Nicola Thomas (Lancaster University, UK), and 'Mapping Internationalist Forms of Antifascist Solidarity: The League of Nation's Archive of Antifascist Communication in response to the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939' (funded by the University of Liverpool's Early Career and Returners Fund, 2024-25) with my colleague Dr Nicola Mathieson (International Relations, University of Liverpool).
I'm the editor of the Bulletin of Francophone Postcolonial Studies, the bi-annual journal of the Society of Francophone Studies. I'm also on the editorial board of the Comparative Literature section of Modern Languages Open and a member of the editorial advisory board of the Journal of Romance Studies.
My research and biography overlap at certain points: I'm a first-generation university graduate and grew up in Germany and in Algeria, my father's native country (unfortunately without picking up much Arabic). I speak French, German, and English and have started learning Yiddish and Russian.
I'm currently the Deputy Academic Lead for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion of the School of Histories, Languages and Cultures, as well as the Research Environment Lead and the Early-Career Researcher Rep of the Department of Languages, Cultures and Film. I'm also a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (now AdvanceHE).