WiF UK-Ireland Committee

Julie Rodgers

President

Julie is Associate Professor and Subject Leader in French at Maynooth University. Her scholarly interests include Quebec literature and culture, women’s writing in French, and French and Francophone women’s cinema. Her current research focuses on the production and reception of maternal counternarratives and incorporates the study of a wide range of mothering experiences that do not correspond to the normative, patriarchal script of motherhood. Julie is co-editor of ‘The Truth About (M)Otherhood: Choosing to be Childfree’ (Demeter, 2021) and is part of a team of researchers on the EU H2020-funded MotherNet Project.

Adina Stroia

Secretary

Adina Stroia is Lecturer in French and Francophone Studies at Leeds University. Her research interests range from contemporary French women’s writing to narratives of ageing and loss.

Christie Margrave

Treasurer

Christie Margrave is Lecturer in French and Associate Dean of EDI in AHSS at Cardiff University. Her research focuses on Francophone women’s writing and marginalised voices, with a special interest in narrative reproductive medicine, lived experiences of birthing, and representations of non-normative families in C21 women’s life-writing.

Felicity Moffat

2027 Conference Co-Organiser

Felicity Moffat recently submitted her thesis at King’s College London on representations of middle-aged women in twenty-first century francophone fiction. She is also interested in graphic novels, cinema and translation. She completed her undergraduate degree in French and Spanish at KCL and a master’s at Oxford in Comparative Literature and Critical Translation. Before returning to study in 2017, she was a lawyer, teacher, and athletics coach.

Ally Pugh

2027 Conference Co-Organiser

Alexandra Pugh is Hamilton Junior Research Fellow at The Queen’s College, Oxford. She received her PhD from the Department of French at King’s College London. She works in the fields of French and gender studies, and her PhD thesis explored Virginie Despentes and contemporary queer-feminist thought. She has an MSt in Women’s Studies and a BA in History and French from the University of Oxford.

Emma Flynn

ECR Rep

Emma Flynn is Tutor in Media, Culture and Society at the University of Glasgow. She received her PhD in Gender Studies from the University of Strathclyde. Her research explores representations of sexual violence in contemporary English and French literature and film. She writes fiction and non-fiction and runs a feminist theory reading group with Glasgow Zine Library.

Ciara Gorman

Communications Officer

Ciara (pronunciation) is Assistant Professor in French and Francophone Studies at Maynooth University. She received her PhD on representations of female criminality in contemporary French crime fiction from Queen’s University Belfast, and is a closet enthusiast for all things 17th-century France.

Katie-Rose Nandhra

Co-PG Rep

Katie-Rose is a first-year PhD student at University College London. Working at the
intersections of poetry and the medical humanities, her thesis investigates the poetic
voice as a ‘tubercular breath’ in the scattered writings of Colette Peignot, alias Laure
(1903–1938), an enigmatic figure in the shadows of the French avant-garde. Her
research on Laure began during her MA in French Language, Literature and Culture
at King’s College London, where she also completed a BA in French and Spanish.
Having been inspired by a passionate preoccupation with women’s literary history to join the association, she is excited to take up her role on the Committee and looks
forward to welcoming new students into the WiF community.

Tamzin Elliott

Co-PG Rep

Based in Edinburgh, Tamzin recently a Master of Arts by Research at Durham University where she now work full-time in an administrative role in the university research office. Her research centres on representations of abortion and engagement with reproductive justice in post-MeToo francophone literature. Outside her research and work commitments, she is a volunteer with the Abortion Support Network, an England-based charity providing financial support for abortions across Europe.

Siobhán McIlvanney

Legacy Member

Siobhán McIlvanney is Professor of French and Francophone Women’s Writing at King’s College London. She has researched and published extensively in the field and has a particular interest in Franco-Algerian women’s writing. Her recent research focus has been on representations of ageing and care in Francophone women’s writing, and on the role the humanities can play in helping us to age better. She has long been an enthusiastic supporter of, and contributor to, Women in French both in the UK and North America, and is thrilled at the creation of a website and committee that will continue to promote the collaborative exchanges and supportive environment that characterise WiF.

Shirley Jordan

Legacy Member

Shirley Jordan is Emerita Professor of French Studies at Newcastle University and a long-
standing supporter of WiF. Her research interests include 20 th – and 21 st – century women’s writing, visual art and film in French, and women’s experimental self-narrative across media. From 2016 to 2025 she was Co-Director of the Centre for the Study of Contemporary Women’s Writing in The University of London’s Institute of Languages, Culture and Societies. Her latest research has focused on ageing, ageism and care as explored in literary narratives, visual representations, and theory. She is completing a Leverhulme Trust funded
monograph exploring the representations of ageing and care for older people made over
several decades by Magnum photographer Martine Franck. She is a series editor of the
‘Cultures of Ageing and Care’ book series published with De Gruyter.

Diana Holmes

Legacy Member

Diana Holmes is Professor Emerita of French at the University of Leeds, and a founder-member of Women in French UK-Ireland – so delighted to see the network thrive in this way with new generations of feminist French scholars. She has published widely on French women’s writing from the late nineteenth century to the present, ranging across the hierarchy of culture from ‘high’ to ‘low’ brow, with a particular interest in what women choose to read. She is currently working on film director Jacqueline Audry (1908-77) and continuing to publish on women writers and feminism particularly at the Belle Epoque period.

Maggie Allison

Legacy Member

Maggie is a Senior Research Fellow in Modern French Studies at the University of Bradford. Her research focuses on gender, representation and media (both audiovisual and print), and women’s role in French public life with particular emphasis on women in French politics and the causes they have championed (e.g. Hubertine Auclert’s fight for women’s suffrage, founding in 1876 the Société le droit des femmes, and Simone Veil’s defence, and the successful adoption by the French Assemblée, of women’s abortion rights (Loi Veil 1975)). Her current research charts French women’s fluctuating absence/presence in the French political arena, including the failed presidential attempts of Ségolène Royal and Marine Le Pen and the demise of women 2022 presidential candidates (notably Valérie Pécresse), contrasting with the appointment of Élisabeth Borne as French Première Ministre; this last, counterbalanced by the slight drop from 39.5% to 37.3% in the proportion of women députées in the French Assemblée. Among her co-edited volumes are several resulting from Women in French conferences. She is a founding member of Women in French UK.

Véronique Desnain

Legacy Member

Véronique Desnain recently retired from the University of Edinburgh, and is a specialist in 17th-century literaure and contemporary crime fiction, with a particular focus on female writers/characters. A long-standing supporter of Women in French, she also organised, with colleagues north of the border, Women in French Scotland.