Maynooth University French Studies

Research areas in which the department has an interest include: immigration to Ireland from France and to France from Ireland in the early modern period; Huguenot studies; autobiographical writing; women’s writing; twentieth-century fiction and poetry; translation studies; lexicography; francophone literary and language issues; minority languages in French society. Further information on staff research interests can be found at https://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/french/our-research

Loïc Bourdeau is Lecturer in French Studies at National University of Ireland, Maynooth and formerly College of Liberal Arts Board of Regents Endowed Associate Professor of French and Francophone Studies at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette (2015-22). His work has centred on cultural production in France and Quebec, women’s and gender studies, queer studies, literary criticism, film and care studies. He has published four edited or co-edited volumes—Horrible Mothers. Representations across Francophone North America (2019), ReFocus: The Films of François Ozon (2021), Revisiting HIV/AIDS in French Culture: Raw Matters (2022), and Diversity and Decolonization in French Studies: New Approaches to Teaching—in addition to articles, chapters, and several edited special-themed journal issues.

Dr. Francesca Counihan: Following my initial studies at University College Galway, I spent 6 years in France, working first as a lectrice and then moving to Paris to work on my DEA and doctorate at l’Université de Paris VII. I then lectured in UCG for 3 years, before taking up my current post in Maynooth. I was involved in founding the Association of French and Francophone Studies in Ireland (ADEFFI) and am also a member of Women in French and of the Société Internationale d’Études Yourcenariennes (SIEY). In collaboration with my colleague Dr Bérengère Deprez from the University of Louvain, I organised the 2005 conference of the SIEY at NUI Maynooth. I was recently external reader for a PhD thesis on gender in the work of Marguerite Yourcenar completed at Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland. Other external responsibilities include work as co-editor of a critical collection on Yourcenar with Peter Lang, as reader for the Irish Journal of French Studies and also for the Women’s Studies Review in NUI Galway. In recent presentations, I have looked at 'Trois femmes puissantes, by Marie Ndiaye (2010), the use of images in Camille Laurens’ recent work (2010), the position of women writers in the Académie française, and ancient and modern history in the work of Marguerite Yourcenar (2013).

Dr Áine Larkin: I joined Maynooth University as Lecturer in French in January 2022, after ten happy years at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. Drawing on my doctoral research, my monograph Proust Writing Photography was published by Legenda in 2011. In October 2021, a special issue of Essays in French Literature and Culture that I co-edited with Enda McCaffrey was published, on the Critical Medical Humanities. In summer 2019, I was granted British Academy/Leverhulme research funding to support a project on women in the nineteenth-century George Washington Wilson photographic collection, housed at the University of Aberdeen library. An online symposium as part of that project will take place on 1 June 2022. My research interests include Proust studies, critical disability studies, and text/image relations. In July 2019, a special issue of Forum for Modern Language Studies that I edited was published, on the topic of Dance in modern and contemporary French culture. I have contributed chapters to a number of books and journal special issues, including Marcel Proust in Context (ed. Adam Watt, Cambridge University Press, 2014); Cent ans de jalousie proustienne (eds. Erika Fülöp and Philippe Chardin, Classiques Garnier,2015); La ligne d’écume: Encountering the French Beach (eds. Sophie Fuggle and Nicholas Gledhill, Pavement Books, 2016); ‘French Autopathography’, L’Esprit Créateur (ed. Steven Wilson, 2016); Fashion, Modernity, and Materiality in France: From Rousseau to Art Deco (ed. Heidi Brevik-Zender, State University of New York Press, 2018). With Claire Launchbury, I co-edited and contributed to a special issue of Romance Studies on Proust and music (2014). A graduate of Trinity College, Dublin (BA (Hons) 2000 and PhD 2007) and the Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris III (DEA 2001), in 2008 I was awarded a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship by the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences.   

Dr. Elyse Ritchey: My primary research interests are in language endangerment and revitalisation, with a particular focus on the Occitan language of southern France. I also work in the fields of discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, multilingualism, and critical toponymy. My teaching interests include synchronic and diachronic French linguistics and sociolinguistics and French language pedagogy. I have a particular attachment to southern France and studied in Aix-en-Provence as an undergraduate. In 2016, I received a Chateaubriand HSS Fellowship from the Embassy of France in the U.S., which enabled me to do fieldwork for my thesis as a visiting scholar at the Université de Toulouse-Jean Jaurès. I completed my Bachelor of Arts degree (Magna cum laude) in Photography and French at the University of Arizona in 2004. After graduating with a Master of Arts in French from California State University, Los Angeles in 2008, I earned my PhD in Romance Languages and Literatures from the University of California, Berkeley in 2019. My thesis, ‘Lenga nòstra? Local discourses on Occitan in southwestern France’ explores portrayals and perceptions of Occitan in public discourse in two rural towns. Before coming to Maynooth, I worked as a Lecturer of French Linguistics at Queen’s University, Belfast for one year.

Dr. Julie Roders: I graduated with a BA Hons in French and English from Trinity College Dublin in 2000. I obtained a First Class with Distinction in Spoken French and was awarded the Prix de l'Ambassade for first place in the French finals (TCD). Following a year as lectrice d'anglais at the University of Lille 1, I returned to Trinity to begin a Ph.D on Quebec Women's Writing under the supervision of Professor Emeritus David Parris (and funded by TCD). Since completing my Ph.D, I have lectured in French language and literature at Maynooth as well as one semester at Liverpool University. My research areas include the following: Contemporary Women's Writing in French; Contemporary Women's Cinema in French; Quebec Literature; Migrant Writing; and, Maternal Narratives. I am the former secretary of ADEFFI (Irish Association for French Studies) and former president of ACSI (Association of Canadian Studies in Ireland). I currently serve on the board of the Franco-Irish Literary Festival. I also hold a PGDHE from Maynooth University and am interested in the scholarship of teaching and learning at third level. I am a native of the inimitable city of Derry and like to return there regularly. I also have strong attachments to the small town of Lorient in Brittany (France) where I spent several years as a jeune fille au-pair and a teaching assistant. In 2019, I was awarded a Flaherty Scholarship from ICUF (Ireland Canada University Fund) for my work on Quebec literature. In 2021, I was awarded a D'Arcy McGee Beacon Fellowship which I held at Concordia University.