I am a third-year D.Phil. candidate working on 15th- and 16th-century French literature, culture, and history. In the 2024-25 academic year, I was a Visiting Scholar in the Department of History at Princeton University, where I held the Daniel M. Sachs Class of 1960 Graduating Scholarship.
My doctoral thesis explores the craft of anthology-making by looking closely at the history of one country––France––over the course of three remarkable decades, roughly 1500 to 1530. This under-studied period, situated at a juncture between the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, saw an explosion in the production of poetry anthologies as well as the emergence of innovative and experimental compilatory practices. Through in-depth case studies of individual manuscripts and early printed books, I argue that anthologies have significant implications for our understandings of national identity, literary history, and canon formation. Authors in my corpus include more canonical ones such as George Chastelain, Jean Molinet, and Jean Lemaire de Belges, lesser-known poets like Guillaume Cretin and André de La Vigne, as well as numerous minor poets or anonymous ‘others’.
Alongside my doctoral work, I am currently Research Assistant on the John Fell-funded project ‘La Chastelaine de Vergi: Encounters in Medieval Literary Space' (2023–25), co-led by Prof. Sophie Marnette and Prof. Helen Swift.
In a public engagement context, I am strongly committed to dismantling the barriers and inequities that block access to higher education. Before coming to Oxford as a first-generation student, I was educated at state comprehensive schools in Barnsley and Rotherham, South Yorkshire. I regularly deliver academic taster sessions and talks for students from non-selective state schools and colleges. My project at Princeton focuses on using medieval manuscripts as interdisciplinary teaching tools to support widening participation in the arts and humanities. You can read more about it here.
Research interests
- 15th- and 16th-century French literature, culture, and history
- Anthologies and mise en recueil
- Rhétoriqueur poetry
- Manuscript materiality, early print culture, book history
- Ecological thought, especially affect theory and media archaeology
Teaching
- New Ecologies: Plants, Stones, Robots (FHS Paper XII)
- English to French Translation; French to English Translation (1st and 2nd years)
- Introduction to Literary Theory (Prelims Paper XII)
- Narrative Fiction (Prelims Paper IV)
Peer-reviewed publications
'Cretin imprimé. Le recueil des Traictez singuliers de Galliot Du Pré (1526)', Cahiers de Recherches Médiévales et Humanistes, 42.1 (2024), 243–264. https://doi.org/10.48611/isbn.978-2-406-17449-3.p.0243
'Bodies, Temporalities and Archives: Literary and Filmic Production after the 2010 Haitian Earthquake', French Studies Bulletin, 44.166 (2023), 1–11. **Winner of the Society for French Studies R. Gapper Undergraduate Essay Prize 2021/22. https://doi.org/10.1093/frebul/ktad001
Books reviews
'Fleurs et jardins de poésie: les anthologies poétiques au XVIe siècle (domaine français, incursions européennes). Sous la direction d’Adeline Lionetto et Jean-Charles Monferran', French Studies, 78.2 (2024), 326–327. https://doi.org/10.1093/fs/knae007
'"Bon pays de France": enjeu national et joutes poétiques sous le règne de François Ier. Par Nina Mueggler', French Studies (2024). https://doi.org/10.1093/fs/knae127
'Recovering the Medieval in the French Renaissance: Claude Fauchet's "Veilles ou Observations". By Anthony J. Bruder', French Studies, forthcoming.
Invited lectures
'Anthology Making in an Age of Discovery: French Maritime Poetry in the Print Shop', British Library, June 2025.
'Global Rhétoriqueur Poetry: Jean Parmentier's Voyage to Sumatra in Early Print Culture', Tulane University, New Orleans, March 2025.
'Medieval Francophone Manuscripts in the Princeton University Library', Princeton University, February 2025.
Recent conference papers
'Anthologizing Rebellious Voices; or, What Happened in Dijon after the Battle of Pavia?', Renaissance Society of America, 71st Annual Meeting, Boston, March 2025.
'Composing Poetry, Navigating Oceans: Jean Parmentier’s Blue Poetics', MLA Convention, New Orleans, January 2025.
'La Normandie rétro? La poésie tardomédiévale imprimée à Rouen de 1540 à 1600', co-presented with Adrian Armstrong, Colloque international de la SFDES: La culture médiévale à la Renaissance, Université de Rouen, October 2024.
'"Qu'on luy retient une demye année": Wage Cuts, Strike Action, and the Politics of Precarity in Late-Medieval Francophone Poetry', part of the panel Premodern Precarities, Society for French Studies 65th Annual Conference, University of Stirling, July 2024.
'Court Poetry in the Print Shop, or How to Make an Œuvre (with Michel Foucault)', International Courtly Literature Seminar, Trinity College Dublin, June 2024
'Premodern Anthologising as Resistance', Cambridge French Graduate Research Seminar, University of Cambridge, May 2024.