M.LITT.(RESEARCH)

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

Prof Ruth Whelan
Ruth Whelan was an undergraduate and postgraduate student at Trinity College Dublin. She graduated with a First Class BA in French and Spanish in 1977, a HDipEd in 1978, and a PhD in 1985, which was funded for three years by Trinity College, Dublin. Part of her research work on the intellectual culture of Seventeenth-Century France was carried out over a three year period in Paris where she was a visiting student at the École Normale Supérieure, funded by the French Government and the International Federation of University Women. She studied for a DEA at the Université de Paris X, which was awarded in 1981, and held a research fellowship at the Collège de France from 1982 to 1983. She held a Lectureship (1984–1996), and Senior Lectureship (1996–1997) at Trinity College Dublin, where she was also elected to Fellowship in 1990. She was a Visiting Fellow at the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel (Germany) in 1988; and a Senior Visiting Fellow at Linacre College Oxford in 1992. Prof Whelan was elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy in 2000; and a Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques in 2007. She is a research associate at the Université de Nantes; and was appointed by the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism to the Board of the National Museum in 2005. Prof Whelan currently holds an honorary Senior Research Fellowship at Archbishop Marsh’s Library, Dublin. She has given research lectures in Ireland, France, Britain, Germany, Holland and Switzerland. Prof Whelan is the author of The Anatomy of Superstition, a Study of the Historical Theory and Practice of Pierre Bayle (Oxford, 1989), a joint editor of De l’humanisme aux Lumières, Bayle et le protestantisme (Oxford, 1996), the Correspondance de Pierre Bayle. Tome premier, 1662–1674. (Oxford, 1999), Correspondance de Pierre Bayle. Tome deuxième. Novembre 1674–Novembre 1677 (Oxford, 2001), Toleration and Religious Identity. The Edict of Nantes and its Implications in France, Britain and Ireland (with Carol Baxter) (Dublin, 2003), and the Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment (Oxford University Press, 2003. 4 vol.); Narrating the Self in Early Modern Europe (Oxford etc, 2007) (with Bruno Tribout). She is the author of some seventy papers on the religious and intellectual culture of Seventeenth-Century France and is currently writing a book on the religious culture of the Huguenots in Ireland. Further biographical details may be obtained from the Dictionary of International Biography. Thirty third edition (Cambridge, 2008).

Dr Éamon Ó Ciosáin
Éamon Ó Ciosáin is a graduate of UCD, and of the Université de Rennes, where he obtained a Maîtrise and a DEA. He obtained a Doctorate ès Lettres from the Université de Rennes 2. His research interests include Irish immigration to France 1600–1700 (history, literature, writing exile) cross-cultural studies (regional literatures in France, African and Caribbean writing in French), regionalism in France, literary translation, medieval French, Breton language and culture. He is a member of ADEFFI, and of the Association for 18th-Century Ireland. He has published several articles on various aspects of Irish migration to France from 1590 to 1789, in The Irish in Europe 1580–1815 (ed. T O’Connor, Dublin, 2000), Irlande et Bretagne Vingt Siècles d’Histoire (Rennes, 1994), Exiles and Migrants: Crossing Thresholds in European Culture and Society (ed. T Coulson, Brighton, 1997), Ireland and the French Enlightenment 1700–1800 (ed. G Gargett and G Sheridan, Macmillan, 1999), and other publications in French, Irish and English. He has also published a book of translations into French of 20th century Irish-language poetry, Une Ile et d’Autres Iles (Quimper, 1984), and contributed as translator to Anthologie de la Poésie Irlandaise du XXe Siècle (ed. J-Y Masson, Paris, 1996). He has published translations in Breton, and was co-author of Foclóir Gaeilge-Briotáinis (Irish-Breton dictionary, Lesneven, 1987).

Dr Kathleen Shields
Kathleen Shields is a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, and of the Université de Paris III (Sorbonne Nouvelle), where she obtained a Maîtrise, and of Cambridge University, where she completed a PhD. Her research interests include translation and literature, bilingual lexicography (English and French), French as a world language and Francophone writing. She is a member of the Irish Translators’ Association, and of L’Association du français appliqué. She is also a member of reading panel/comité de lecture, Harrap’s Unabridged Dictionary/Dictionaire (Chambers Harrap: Edinburgh, 2001). Dr Shields’ research has been in three areas, translation, dictionary making and more recently French language policy and attitudes to the language (see publications and conference presentations). A current research project is on the topic of French in a Globalizing World: English as the Enemy. Dr Shields is co-editor with Prof Michael Clarke (Classics NUIG) of a collection of essays, Translating Emotion, due to appear in 2010 with Peter Lang. From 2000 her research areas have attracted three doctoral students. Working in translation studies has taught Dr Shields that while translation is an overlooked area of the Irish cultural landscape, the textual analysis of translations shows that translation is often in fact a vector of cultural change. Dr Shields research into French language policy and French attitudes towards that language indicates three important features: resistance to linguistic change, blind spots in policy making and education, and finally zones of linguistic creativity.

Dr Francesca Counihan
Francesca Counihan is a graduate of University College Galway. She obtained an MA from the NUI, and a DEA and Doctorat ès Lettres from the Université de Paris VII – Denis Diderot. Her research interests include the work of Marguerite Yourcenar, authority in literature, contemporary French women’s writing, feminist theory and criticism, literary translation, and Francophone writing. She is a founding member and former secretary of the ADEFFI (Association d’Études Françaises et Francophones d’Irlande), and is a member of the Société Internationale d’Études Yourcenariennes, the Centre International de Documentation Marguerite Yourcenar, Women in French, and the Society for French Studies (UK).

Dr Julie Rodgers
Dr Julie Rodgers is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin where she was awarded a First Class Honours in French at undergraduate level in 2000 and a Ph.D in French in 2008 under the supervision of Mr David Parris. She also obtained a PGDHE (Postgraduate Diploma in Higher Education) from Maynooth University in 2009. Dr Rodgers has taught in TCD, UCD, University of Liverpool, Université de Lille 1 and has been lecturing for the French Department, SMLLC, MU since 2007. Her research areas include Quebec Literature, French Women’s Writing, Francophonie and Migrant Writing.