WiF Publications

The Women in French UK-Ireland conferences have given rise to several highly-regarded edited volumes and special issues featuring the work of our members. We have collected these publications here for your perusal.

Disruptive Discourses by Francophone Women engages with the concept of disruption in women’s cultural production in French, incorporating a range of perspectives, contexts and genres across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The volume interrogates textual representations of disruption in a myriad of forms as well as its potential for transformation. It is published in November 2025 by Liverpool University Press, in the series Contemporary French and Francophone Cultures. Click here to see the webpage on LUP’s website.

Women and Power in Contemporary French and Francophone Cultures and Societies arose from the 2021 WiF UK-Ireland conference. It was published in April 2026 by University of Wales Press – click here to see its webpage. The women represented in this volume as both authors and protagonists exert power by resisting the social paradigms that govern how they ‘should’ behave – by thwarting expectations of typical ‘feminine’ conduct (whether in relation to female corporeality and sexuality) or by their (non)adherence to the institutions of marriage and motherhood. However, they also claim power by espousing more conventionally ‘feminine’ roles, recuperating and revaluing those that entail caring and nurturing. They emphasise, in ways consistent with the growing body of feminist work on care relations, the positive, life-affirming potential that such roles embody. This volume focuses on women who, through smaller and larger acts of empowerment, seek to exert influence over their life choices. Its diverse contributions acknowledge the contextual, historical and intersectional specificities governing every woman’s power to choose her own present and future, and the important role played by even incremental changes in contributing to a greater sense of personal independence and self-knowledge, without which there can be no meaningful political change. This project is accompanied by Claire Legendre’s five-act play Minutes d’arrêt, which the author has kindly given us permission to host on our website. View it here.

Published in December 2025, this special issue of Nottingham French Studies proceeds from the 2023 Women in French UK-Ireland Conference, and is available to view online here. Its constellational scope covers activism in all its varied forms, from women’s political activity in France to the power of women’s voices in art and literature.