Our Researchers
Prof. Natalie Edwards SFHEA
The University of Adelaide
Natalie Edwards is Professor of French and Director of Graduate Studies for the Faculty of Arts at the University of Adelaide. She completed her BA(Hons) in the UK (University of Bath) and her PhD in the US (Northwestern University). Her research investigates literary writing by minority authors: migrant authors, exiled writers, refugee writers and women writers, for example. She focuses on contemporary authors who write in French – not just from France but also those who write in French from other parts of the Francophone world. She is interested in how minority writers use literature as a means to represent their experience and how they innovate literary genres, paradigms and canons as they do so.
She has written three sole-authored books on this literature: Shifting Subjects: Plural Subjectivity in Francophone Women’s Autobiography (2011), Voicing Voluntary Childlessness: Narratives of Non-Mothering (2016) and Multilingual Life Writing by Francophone Women: Translingual Selves (2020). She has also published numerous edited volumes in the UK, US and Australia.
Dr. Christopher Hogarth
The University of South Australia
Dr. Christopher Hogarth is Senior Lecturer in Literary Studies and French at the University of South Australia, based in Adelaide. He completed his BA (Hons) in the UK (University of Bath) and his PhD in the US (Northwestern University). He has worked in Australia since 2012. He has published especially on the intersection of literature from France, Italy and Senegal, with a focus on migrant writing and transdiasporic identity. While Senegalese literature about migration has long been the focus of his study, he also writes about the notion of “Afropean” culture in French, Italian and English, as well as the intersection of literature with other forms of media, such as film and music. As someone living a life of transcontinental métissage he is delighted to be a Chief Investigator on this project to chart a transcontinental literary history.
Ms. Freya Davies-Ardill
The University of Adelaide
Freya Davies-Ardill completed her BA and Honours degrees at the University of Adelaide in French and Music. Her Honours thesis was an investigation of the work of Tahitian writer Chantal Spitz. She is currently completing her PhD at the university of Adelaide and her research forms part of the French-Australian migrant narratives project.