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Faculties & Departments
Department of French, School of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures
Research of Staff
Professor Ruth Whelan
Ruth Whelan was an undergraduate and postgraduate student at Trinity College Dublin. She graduated with a First Class B.A. in French and Spanish in 1977, a H. Dip. Ed. in 1978, and a Ph.D. in 1985, which was funded for three years by Trinity College, Dublin. Part of her research work on Pierre Bayle and 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 D.E.A. 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.
Professor Whelan was elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy in 2000; she held a research Professorship at NUI Maynooth from 2004-2006; and she was made 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 from 2005 to 2010. Professor Whelan currently holds an honorary Senior Research Fellowship at Archbishop Marsh's Library, Dublin, where she is creating an inventory of the correspondence of Élie Bouhéreau - a Huguenot refugee and the first librarian. She has given research lectures in Ireland, France, Britain, Germany, Holland and Switzerland. Professor 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 eighty research papers on the religious and intellectual culture of seventeenth-century France. Further biographical details may be obtained from the Dictionary of International Biography. Thirty-fifth edition (Cambridge, 2008).
Professor Whelan’s research and publications form six main clusters:
- Pierre Bayle
- The religious and intellectual culture of Huguenot refugees between 1680 and 1730
- The Huguenots and Ireland (including Jacques Abbadie)
- Correspondence networks in seventeenth-century France and Europe
- Early-modern French life-writing (Memoirs, letters, biographies, martyr-narratives etc.)
- The life-writing of French Protestant galley slaves
Professor Whelan welcomes graduate and post-doctoral research on seventeenth-century France. She has supervised, and continues to supervise, Masters, doctoral and post-doctoral research in the following areas:
- Pierre Bayle
- Representations of women and women’s writing in seventeenth-century France
- The religious culture, life-writing, and correspondence networks of the nuns of Port-Royal
- The Huguenots in Ireland
- The religious and intellectual culture of the Huguenot Refuge
- Early-modern French life-writing (biography, autobiography, martyr-tales, correspondences)
- Editing early-modern French correspondences and texts
Dr Michael O'Dwyer (Retired 2010)
Michael O'Dwyer is a graduate of St Patrick's College, Maynooth, of The Université de Toulouse- Le Mirail, where he completed a Maîtrise, and of The Université de Paris III (Sorbonne Nouvelle), where he obtained his Ph.D. His principal research interests are the Christian novel in France and the works of Julien Green. He was secretary of the Faculty of Arts, Maynooth, 1992-1994, and Dean of Arts, Maynooth, 1995-1998. He was Acting Head of the Department of French, Maynooth, 1996-1997 and 2002-2003, and was Subject Leader in the Department 2006-2010.He was Secretary of the Royal Irish Academy's National Committee for Modern Language Studies, 1992-1996. He is Vice-President of the Société Internationale d'Etudes Greeniennes (S.I.E.G.). He is also a consultative committee member of the Association Internationale des Amis de François Mauriac. He has also been a member of the European Commission's Directorate-General for Education and Culture which assesses applications for funding in the framework of co-operation programmes in Higher Education between the E.U. and U.S.A. and between the E.U. and Canada. He has presented research papers to conferences at several international universities including the University of Wales, Swansea, the Sorbonne, Louvain-la-Neuve, Ljubljana and Athens, Georgia. He is author of Julien Green: A Critical Study (Dublin, Four Courts Press, 1997) and co-editor of Athlone Besieged - Eyewitness and other contemporary accounts of the sieges of Athlone, 1690 and1691 (Temple Printing and Old Athlone Society, 1991).He is co-author with Michèle Raclot of Le Journal de Julien Green: miroir d’une âme, miroir d’un siècle (Lang,2005)He is editor of Julien Green, Diariste et Essayiste (Lang,2007). He has had some eighty articles and review articles published in literary journals on Green, Mauriac, Bernanos, Huysmans, Pascal and Sulivan in Ireland, the U.K., France, Belgium and the U.SA. In 2009 he was conferred with the title of Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes académiques by the French Prime Minister for his services to French Literary Studies. Dr O’Dwyer retired in 2010 and is continuing his research activities.
Dr Éamon Ó Ciosáin
Éamon Ó Ciosáin is a graduate of U.C.D., and of the Université de Rennes, where he obtained a Maîtrise and a D.E.A. 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 Ph.D. 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 Professor 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 M.A. from the N.U.I., and a D.E.A. 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 (U.K.).
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 the National University of Ireland, Maynooth 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, NUIM since 2007. Her research areas include Quebec Literature, French Women’s Writing, Francophonie and Migrant Writing. She is also heavily involved in promoting the scholarship of teaching and learning at third level, particularly with regard to e-learning, assessment and large group teaching. She has recently been awarded funding by the NDLR to design and complete a project on screen-casting for French. Dr Rodgers is a member of a number of academic associations both within Ireland and internationally: ACSI, ADEFFI, AJCELQ, ARM, BACS, WIF. She is the author of the annual review of publications in French-Canadian Literature for The Year’s Work in Modern Language Studies.
Dr Anne Cameron (Staff Member 2010 - 2011)
Anne Cameron is a graduate of Durham University, where she completed a B.A. (hons) in Combined Studies in Arts, an M.A. in Seventeenth-Century Studies and a PhD in French. She has taught in the Department of French at Durham and has recently joined the teaching staff at NUIM.
Her research interests are seventeenth-century French literature, particularly poetry, and Anglo-French relations in the early modern period. She has published articles on English translations of the poetry of Théophile de Viau and Vincent Voiture and given numerous conference papers relating to the seventeenth-century English translation of French poetry. She is a member of the Society for Seventeenth-Century French Studies.