Research

I am interested in works of literature, philosophy and film that can help us explore what it means to be human in the twenty-first century. These works can be contemporary or not, fiction or nonfiction, avant-garde or popular culture. I particularly focus on texts and films that allow us to engage with recent technological and ecological developments. 

This academic year (2025-26), I am on leave – working on a Leverhulme-sponsored research project entitled World Brain. A Cultural History. Here I examine the idea of the world as a coherent (often cognisant) system as it has appeared in 20th and 21st century film, fiction and cultural theory. The current plan is to engage with writers, filmmakers, thinkers and topics such as H.G. Wells, Alain Resnais, Stanisław Lem, Ursula le Guin, Le groupe des 10, Vilém Flusser, cybernetics and Gaia theory.

Previous publications include three monographs on film and poetry: 

The Feel-Bad Film (2015) studies of a number of contemporary filmmakers - Lucile Hadzihalilovic, Harmony Korine, Claire Denis, Michael Haneke and Lars von Trier among others - who have made films that place the spectator in a position of intense discomfort. I ask: What do the directors believe they can achieve via the ‘feel-bad’ experience? And (why) should we watch and study feel-bad films? A podcast about the book can be found here.

Twenty-First-Century Symbolism: Verlaine, Baudelaire, Mallarmé (2022) examines how these three nineteenth-century poets speak to the present; I argue that their writings prefigure a view of human subjectivity that is appropriate in our times. A short interview about the book is available on the publisher's blog (the book was awarded the 2023 R. Gapper Book Prize by the Society for French Studies).

Jointly written with Daniele Rugo Images of Unrest. Documentary Film and Political Violence (2026) considers documentary images not as representations of a pre-existing reality, but as original experiences that are a part of a reality that they both present and shape. The volume analyses films by Kazuo Hara, Barbet Schroeder, Gianfranco Rosi, Harun Farocki, Rithy Panh, Éléonore Weber, Raed Andoni, Éric Baudelaire, Ossama Mohammed & Wiam Simav Bedirxan, Ognjen Glavonić, Sergeï Loznitsa, and Isabelle Ingold & Viviane Perelmuter.

I have also written about writers, philosophers and filmmakers such as André Breton, Georges Bataille, Alexandre Kojève, Jean-Paul Sartre, Roland Barthes, Chantal Akerman, James Benning, Chris Marker, Bertrand Bonello, and Judith Butler.  

Undergraduate teaching

I teach 19th, 20th and 21st century French literature, continental philosophy and film studies.

Graduate teaching and supervision

I teach on the MSt in Film Aesthetics ('Key Debates in Contemporary Film Theory') and on the MSt in Modern Languages ('Rethinking Subjectivity: Technology, Ecology, Critique'). I am always happy to hear from prospective students whose research interests are related to mine.

I currently supervise one PhD-student:

Benjamin Micallef: Semio-ecology: An Archeology of Ontological Difference in European Thought (1948-1968)

Publications

Monographs

w. Daniele Rugo: Images of Unrest. Documentary Film and Political Violence (2026). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2026. (224 p.)

Twenty-First-Century Symbolism: Verlaine, Baudelaire, Mallarmé. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2022. (232 p.)

The Feel-Bad Film. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015. (200 p.)

Community, Myth and Recognition in 20th Century French Literature and Thought. London: Continuum, 2009. (184 p.)

Le Sacrifice de la sirène - « Un coup de dés » et la poétique de Stéphane Mallarmé. Copenhagen: Copenhagen University Press/Museum Tusculanum, 2003. (219 p.)

 

Edited Books and Journals

'From Author Films to Operational Images: French and Francophone Documentary Practices in the New Millennium'. Eds. Nikolaj Lübecker, Zvezdana Ostojic & Nathalie Rachlin Contemporary French Civilization, volume 50 no. 3, 2025.

James Benning's Environments: Politics, Ecology, Duration. Eds. Nikolaj Lübecker & Daniele Rugo. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018. (192 p.)

Europe's Others – Xenophobia in European Culture. Eds. Mikkel Bogh, Jørgen Bruhn, Nikolaj Lübecker & Peter Madsen. Copenhagen: Tiderne Skifter, 2005. (319 p., in Danish)

 

Selected Articles

'David Dufresne's Un Pays qui se tient sage (2020) and Contemporary Documentary Activism'. 295-313 in Contemporary French Civilization 50:3. (2025)

'Surrealist Transhumanism: Jean Rostand and Nicole Vedrès's Aux frontières de l'homme (1952)'. World Picture 15, winter (2025). (online)

w. Daniele Rugo: 'In a Sea of Binary Algae: Chris Marker's Level Five as non-representational documentary', 169-86 in Screen 64: 2. (2023)

'Huppert in the Ozon-Machine: Melodrama and Meta-Acting in 8 Femmes', 30-47 in Performative Opacity in the Work of Isabelle Huppert (eds. Iggy Cortez & Ian Fleishman), Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. (2023)

'On Fire: Cézanne, Straub and Huillet', 73-92 in Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media #23. (2022)

'Jacques Rancière, Mallarmé - The Politics of the Siren' (6300 words), contribution to the online database: Bloomsbury 20th-Century French Thought. (2022)

'Twenty-First-Century Baudelaire?, Affectivity and Ecology in "Le Crépuscule du soir"', 689-704 in Modernism/modernity 27.4. (2020)

'Mallarmé's Digital Demon', 140-58 in Paragraph 43.2. (2020)

'Landscape Memories: Chantal Akerman's Sud and the Spectator-Environment', 41-56 in Angelaki 24:6. (2019)

'Mallarmé's Instruments: The Production of the Individu-Livre', 367-83 in French Studies 73.3. (2019)

'Violence and Landscape in the Films of James Benning’, 55-72 in James Benning’s Environments: Politics, Ecology, Duration (Eds. Lubecker & Rugo). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. (2018)

'Bruno Dumont's Comic Look: P'tit Quinquin as social and ethical intervention', 87-99 in Studies in French Cinema 18.1. (2018)

'The Individual as Environment: Watching Jean-Claude Rousseau’s La Vallée close with Lucretius and Simondon', 195-211 in French Ecocriticism (Eds. Finch-Race & Posthumus). Oxford: Peter Lang. (2017)

'Artaud and Sun: Heliogabalus and contemporary non-anthropocentric theory', 17-29 in Image [&] Narrative 17.5. (2016)

'The Politics of Images: Didi-Huberman, Butler and Rancière', 392-407 in Paragraph 36.3. (2013)

'The Poetry of Idiots: Siegrid Alnoy, Lars von Trier, and Bruno Dumont', 438-54 in New Review of Film and Television Studies 11.4. (2013)

'Camus, Bataille et la morale de la révolte', 38-51 in Présence d'Albert Camus no. 3. (2012)

'Bruno Dumont's Twentynine Palms: The Avant-Garde as Tragedy?', 235-47 in Studies in French Cinema 11.3. (2011)

'Lars von Trier’s Dogville, A Contemporary Feel-Bad Film', 157-68 in Kendall & Horeck (Eds.): The New Extremism in Cinema: From France to Europe. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. (2011)

'The Politics of Desire in Paul Nizan's La Conspiration', 19-39 in Contemporary French Civilization 34.1. (2010)

'Can I take you for a ride, Miss? - On the Titles of Wilhelm Freddie', 173-83 in Aagesen (ed.): Wilhelm Freddie. Stick the Fork in your Eye! Copenhagen: The National Museum of Art. (2009)

'Sartre's Silence – The Limits of Recognition in Why Write?', 42-57 in Sartre Studies International 14.1. (2008)

'L'incarnation éclatée - André Breton entre deux siècles', 125-38 in Jørgensen & Ruth (eds.): Les Défis de l'œuvre. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press. (2007)

'The Dedramatization of Violence in Claire Denis's I Can't Sleep', 17-33 in Paragraph 30.2. (2007)

 

Translation (book-length)

Georges Bataille: Manet. Et biografisk og kritisk studie. Transl. Per Aage Brandt & Lübecker. Copenhagen: Royal Academy of Arts, 2014. (140 p., in Danish)