WiF UK-Ireland Interim Committee

Siobhán 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.

Véronique is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh. She specialises in 17th-century literature 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. She was delighted to be asked to be part of the working group tasked with formalising the existence of WiF UK-Ireland and very much looks forward to meeting new members at the May 2023 Conference.

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.

Alexandra Pugh received her PhD from the Department of French at King’s College London. She works in the fields of French and gender studies, and is writing her PhD thesis on 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 received her PhD in Gender Studies at the University of Strathclyde, where she also teaches. Her current 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 (pronunciation) received her PhD on representations of female criminality in contemporary French crime fiction from Queen’s University Belfast. She is an alumna of Maynooth University, the current PGR/ECR Officer for the International Crime Fiction Association, and a closet enthusiast for all things 17th-century France.

Shirley is Professor of French Studies at Newcastle University. Her research interests are wide, including 20th- and 21st-century women’s writing in French, art and art criticism, photography, ethnography and experimental self-narrative across media. Her recent research has focused on ageing, ageism and care as explored in literary narratives, representations, and theory. She currently holds a Leverhulme Research Fellowship (2022-23) focusing on the representations of ageing and care for older people made over several decades by Magnum photographer Martine Franck.

Diana Holmes is Professor of French at the University of Leeds, and a founder-member of the UK feminist network Women in French. 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. Her latest book Middlebrow Matters: Women’s Reading and the Literary Canon in France since the Belle Époque (Liverpool University Press, 2018), won the American MLA Scaglione Prize for French and Francophone Studies, 2019. She is the current President of the Society for French Studies.

Maggie Allison

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.