Louise Hardwick

Prof

Accepting PhD Students

PhD projects

I lead a lively group of PhD students working on a range of PhD programmes, including our established traditional PhD routes, and our recent addition, the PhD in Translation Studies practice-based route.

I also offer teaching and dissertation supervision for a number of MA-level courses.

Broadly speaking, my expertise falls into the areas of Francophone Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Comparative Studies, World Literature, Sexuality and Gender Studies, and Translation Studies. My PhD students work with me on aspects of literature or visual culture that fall into one - or more - of those areas.

More recently, my theoretical interests in World Literature, Postcolonial Studies, Comparative Literature and Translation Studies have led me to supervise students working in languages including Arabic and Amharic, with appropriate co-supervision from colleagues who advise on linguistic aspects.

I hugely enjoy working with a diverse group of students drawn from across the UK and internationally, including mature students, working parents etc, and who choose a course suited to their specific requirements (e.g. Full time or Part Time; Distance Learning or campus based).


Prospective MA and PhD students are welcome to email me to discuss research proposals.

I am also Programme Director of our very popular MA in Contemporary Literature and Critical Theories, a programme which often serves as a springboard to future PhD study.

20062023

Research activity per year

Personal profile

Biography

Broadly speaking, my expertise falls into the areas of Francophone Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Comparative Studies (particularly with a Caribbean focus), World Literature, Sexuality and Gender Studies, Ecocriticism, and Translation Studies. My students at Undergraduate and Graduate level work with me on aspects of literature (including Translation) and/or visual culture that fall into one - or more - of those areas.

 

I studied for my BA in French & German at Trinity College, Oxford (2000-2004), and as an Erasmus student at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn. As an Undergraduate, I was a Trinity College Scholar, received the University of Oxford Undergraduate Heath Harrison Prize for French and was also awarded a national prize, the Peter Kirk Travel Scholarship.

I remained at Trinity and completed my M.St in 2005, and my D.Phil in Francophone Caribbean Literature in 2008, both of which were fully funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Throughout my D.Phil I worked for the Oxford Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages in roles including the Heath Harrison Teaching Fellow for French, Pembroke College Language Instructor, and Undergraduate Admissions Interviewer. In summer 2008, in the final months of my D.Phil, I was a daily Tutor on the Oxford Sutton Trust Summer School (the predecessor of UNIQ), an access scheme for state school pupils. I was particularly keen to support the Summer School because I had attended myself – and had a wonderful week – in 1999. The Summer School encouraged me to become the first member of my entire family to go to University (having also been the first to stay in school after the age of 16).

In 2008, I moved to Homerton College, University of Cambridge, to take up a Research Fellowship, where I also provided French and Francophone teaching across the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages.

I joined Birmingham as a Lecturer in 2010, and was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2015, Reader in 2017, and Professor in 2018. My research has been supported by major national and international funding awards. In 2012, I won an EU Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship (209,033 Euros) as Principal Investigator for work on Caribbean Biopolitics, supervising a postdoctoral research fellow from Italy. In 2014 I was awarded an AHRC Early Career Leadership Fellowship (£168,000) for a ground-breaking new reading of the author Joseph Zobel.

I have been a Visiting Fellow at Emory University, Atlanta (2015), and a Visiting Scholar at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta (2015), and at the Winthrop-King Institute for Contemporary French and Francophone Studies at Florida State University, Tallahassee (2016). My PhD students have been funded by full scholarships from the AHRC M3C Consortium, the Algerian Government, and the College of Arts and Law at the University of Birmingham (Inlcuding the Sir Henry Thomas Scholarship).

My books to date include the sole-written monographs Childhood, Autobiography and the Francophone Caribbean (LUP, 2013), Joseph Zobel: Négritude and the Novel (LUP, forthcoming) and the edited volume New Approaches to Crime in French Literature, Film and Visual Culture (Peter Lang, 2009). In 2014, I guest-edited a special issue of the International Journal of Francophone Studies on ‘Race, Violence and Biopolitics in Francophone Postcolonial Contexts’.

In 2017, I was honoured to be profiled in Feminae Trinitatis, a portrait exhibition at Trinity College, Oxford. In a groundbreaking initiative, for an entire year the male portraits in the historic College Dining Hall are being replaced with photographs of 16 women whose achievements are judged to be ‘inspirational.’ In 2016, I was appointed to an honorary Associate Fellow position at Homerton College, Cambridge, and was also elected onto the Executive Committee of the UK Society for French Studies, the leading subject organisation in my field. In 2015, I was profiled as a ‘Role Model for Mobility for Women Scientists’ by the EU Marie Curie Alumni Association, and in 2014 I was runner-up in the University of Birmingham Aston Webb Outstanding Early Career Academic prize.

I enjoy developing new ways to bring my research to public audiences both locally and internationally. This gives me an opportunity to collaborate with a number of cultural institutions, including charities and businesses, in Birmingham, the wider Midlands area, London and France, and as far afield as the Caribbean! My research has been featured in the British and French press and has received wide coverage in the French Caribbean radio, television and print media. In 2016, I assisted the research team for an episode of the BBC programme Who Do You Think You Are? I also provide pro-bono research-related consultancy services to Arts and Cultural organisations and charities.

As part of my ongoing commitment to public engagement, I blogged about my AHRC Early Career Leadership Fellowship activities at www.josephzobel.wordpress.com and ran the @zobelproject Twitter account, which are now archived and remain as a permanent public-facing record of activities.

 

Research interests

I have published in the fields of Francophone Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Comparative Studies (particularly with a Caribbean focus), World Literature, Sexuality and Gender Studies, Ecocriticism, and Translation Studies. I work with students at Undergraduate and Graduate level, and postdoctoral fellows, on aspects of literature (including Translation) and/or visual culture that fall into one - or more - of those areas.

 

In the course of my international research, I work with academic and community partners in the UK, France, the Caribbean, the USA and Australia. I also make regular media contributions (to date, in Martinique, metropolitan France, the UK and Angola), and have attracted external funding in excess of £500k through large EU and AHRC awards. At Birmingham, I founded the FRANCOPOCO Network in 2010 to promote internationally significant research, and have to date hosted scholars from the Caribbean, the US and Europe.

My first monograph, Childhood, Autobiography and the Francophone Caribbean (LUP, 2013) is the first study to identify and trace the development of an important tradition of Francophone Caribbean childhood narratives from the early 1900s. I provide a ground-breaking analysis of the aesthetic innovations and political implications – particularly for the transmission of the memory of slavery – in this important and vast body of writing. This research was funded by two individual AHRC Funding Awards for MA and Doctoral study (2004-5; 2005-2008), and by an AHRC award for fieldwork in the French Caribbean (2007). It has become an established reference in the field, with over 1000 copies listed in University libraries across the world (WorldCat, 2023).

In my second monograph, Joseph Zobel: Négritude and the Novel (LUP, forthcoming), I propose an original new reading of that well-known - but often misunderstood - Martinican novelist. My study offers a radical new vision of Zobel, and sets out to change the way that the author is understood by scholars and students alike. This project was supported by the award of an AHRC Early Career Leadership Fellowship (2014-2016). The project’s blog is: https://josephzobel.wordpress.com/ The monograph has in a relatively short time become an established reference in the field, with over 1000 copies held in University libraries all over the world (WorldCat, 2023).

As sole editor, I have also published a book on New Approaches to Crime in French Literature, Culture and Film (Peter Lang, 2009).

More recently, I have undertaken substantial EU-funded research into ‘biopolitics’, examining the governance of populations. For this, I guest-edited a special edition of the International Journal of Francophone Studies on ‘Race, Violence and Biopolitics’ (2014), with Alessandro Corio. That project’s blog is here: https://caribiolit.wordpress.com/.

Subsequently, during my AHRC ECLF, I extended this biopolitical line of investigation to consider the governance of the natural environment in a 2016 article published in French Studies, which is available to read online for free thanks to funding from the AHRC.

I have given keynote speeches, invited lectures and talks in English and French at events organized by the French Ministère des Outre-mer; Society of Francophone Postcolonial Studies; University of Oxford Francophone Seminar; University of Cambridge Modern French Seminar; Liverpool International Slavery Museum; University of Liverpool Post-Slavery ESRC symposium; Race In The Americas research network; Ottawa University; Laval University; Institut Français de Londres; Centre national de la recherche scientifique; Université Paris III - La Sorbonne nouvelle; Université Cheikh Anta Diop Senegal; Université Toulouse- Jean Jaurès; Salon du Livre Paris.

I have organised a number of international research events, conferences and workshops, at the University of Birmingham (Visiting Caribbean Scholar funded through University of London/ILACS in 2017; colloquium on Biopolitics in 2013; visit of Maryse Condé and Richard Philcox in 2010), Cambridge (2009) and Oxford (2007, 2008).

Expertise related to UN Sustainable Development Goals

In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. This person’s work contributes towards the following SDG(s):

  • SDG 10 - Reduced Inequalities
  • SDG 11 - Sustainable Cities and Communities
  • SDG 16 - Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions

External positions

Mockingbird Cinema

21 Apr 2016 → …

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