CONFERENCE 'Languages and literatures of the Francophone world in libraries and archives’
To attend this event, please register here.
The French Studies Library Group (FLSG) is organising a study day on Francophone collections in archives and libraries on 21 November 2025 at the Maison française d’Oxford, in partnership with the French Embassy in the UK (Higher Education, Research and Innovation Department). This follows the successful 2023 Institut Français event on French collections in the United Kingdom and 2024 event on Collections in French at the British Library.
We will discuss the varieties of French language and literature produced outside of France, as well as the dialects, regional and minority languages spoken in France, and the oral and written collections of such material, in print and manuscript as well as electronic resources.
The talks will include work on French-related language material and collections available in a specific library or archive, especially in the United Kingdom and in the Francophone world. The focus will be the history, identification, description, constitution, and circulation, of such sources and corpora, the specific challenges they raise. We will also reflect on their preservation and promotion, including through recent or ongoing digital projects and research.
11-11.15: Introduction Christelle Grouzis-Demory (Higher education, research, innovation department, French Embassy), Stéphane Van Damme (Director, Maison française d’Oxford), Irene Fabry-Tehranchi (Chair of FSLG, French collections, Cambridge University Library)
11.15-12.00: Keynote, writer Eve Guerra (Prix Goncourt du premier roman: Rapatriement), D'une langue l'autre: imitation, variations et altération
chair: Jane Hiddleston
12-13: Languages and dialects of the Francophone world, collections and acquisitions
- Heather Williams (University of Wales Trinity Saint David), An archive in exile: Breton collections in Wales
- James Thomas (Independent scholar) & Sophie Defrance (British Library), Exploring the Occitan collections at the British Library: past and current acquisitions
- Stephanie Kitchen (International African Institute, SOAS, African Books Collective) and Aimé Badjam Yan-Tchamsi (Éditions le Souffle and Éditions Toumaï, Chad), The New Publishing Dynamics of Francophone Africa
13-14: Lunch break
13.30-14: Janet Foot (Librarian, Maison française d’Oxford), Visit of the MFO Library (optional)
14-14.45: Francophone collections in archives and manuscripts
- Isabel Maloney (University of Cambridge), Marie Bashkirtseff’s manuscripts in the British Library
- Julia Ribeiro Thomaz (Université de Lille), Searching for French and Francophone war poetry: collections in the UK and in colonial archives
14.45-15.45: Digital French and Francophone collections and their discovery
- Erika Fülöp (Université Toulouse 2 Jean Jaurès), French and Francophone Born Digital Literature Archives: Past, Present, and Future
- Annick Cloâtre (British Library) & Irène Fabry-Tehranchi (Cambridge University Library), Cataloguing and discovery of French regional languages and dialects in library collections
- Discussion: Francophone digital resources and databases
15.45-16.15: Coffee break
16.15-17: French outside of France
- Daron Burrows (St Peter’s College, University of Oxford), ‘La vision seint Johan’: medieval French Apocalypses in Britain
- Weiao Xing (University of Waterloo), Early Modern French-Indigenous Encounters in the Collections of the Musée de la Civilisation, Québec
17-17.30pm: Conclusions
