I have worked at ULIP since retiring from Glasgow in 2011. I had the opportunity in an earlier job to teach French cinema at a time when courses in this area were still quite rare, which enabled me to turn a hobby, and later a personal obsession, into a major area of research. Paris is self-evidently the best place to study and work on French cinema, and my early attraction to the city was reinforced and developed by this. To have the opportunity, at the end of my career, to share this interest with English-speaking students based in Paris is a great privilege.

Paris is a great walking city whose compactness makes it all but unrivalled in this regard. The intellectual and gastronomic life there may no longer reign quite so supreme as thirty or so years ago, but it still takes a deal of beating.

Teaching specialisms

  • French cinema

Qualifications

First degree from Cambridge and doctorate from Oxford, on nineteenth-century French fiction (Stendhal).

Professional Memberships and Activities

  • Society for French Studies
  • Studies in French Cinema
  • Association for the Study of Modern and Contemporary France

Research

My interest in cinema and in critical theory is nowadays supplemented by a passion for cultural topography and the writing of cities, especially Paris. Publications on Robert Bresson, Jean Renoir and the Marais area of Paris  - all locatable via Google – attest to this. My current project is a monograph on the Marais quartier of Paris. My current research, in retirement, is largely self-funded, though I have benefited from UK and French funding bodies in earlier incarnations.

 

Publications

Books

Book sections

Articles