Camille Braune

Please tell us about your research project

I am currently running my second year of a Ph.D thesis at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University, under the joint supervision of Prof. Sandra Laugier and Prof. Isabelle Alfandary, which is titled: “For a new ethics of attention to language. From the work of the British novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch (1919-1999)”.

My research is part of the continuity, renewal and improvement of Franco-British studies on Iris Murdoch to date, in a common literary, philosophical, and ethical movement. My thesis intends to propound a new ethics of attention to language as a singular moral project, which Iris Murdoch intuited in her first writings, based on the one hand on a very specific idea of what it is to be attentive to language and on the other hand on the new form of attention to ordinary life defined by literature, as an authentic experience which change moral thought and enrich our different forms of life.

In Fall 2022, I have been the third recipient of the Barbara Stevens Heusel Research Fund for Early-Career Scholars awarded by the Iris Murdoch Society, which will enable me to work on the Iris Murdoch Archive at Kingston University in London.

Could you please tell us a bit more about your scholarship/exchange programme?

As the February 2023 Fellow at the Maison Française d’Oxford, I plan to use this scholarship to deepen my research on Iris Murdoch, in several different ways. Iris Murdoch’s life rhymes with Oxford. Born in Dublin in 1919, she entered Somerville College in 1938. She graduated a few years later and left for London in the middle of the Second World War. She stayed in London from 1942 to 1946, worked abroad for a while with refugees, and made a short stay in Cambridge in 1947, where she was introduced to Ludwig Wittgenstein by her friend Elizabeth Anscombe. In 1948, Iris Murdoch returned to Oxford to teach moral philosophy at St Anne’s College until 1963. She died there in February 1999.

I intend to visit Somerville College’s and St Anne College’s archives, in order to work on their Iris Murdoch’s collections. I am also working on the Weston Library special collection, which is composed of diverse letters and postcards from (and to) Iris Murdoch. I am planning to work at every Bodleian Libraries’ site which could have some collections of books, manuscripts or archives regarding Iris Murdoch. I am doing this research abroad under the guidance of Prof. Anil Gomes, Tutor and Fellow in Philosophy at Trinity College. I also plan to meet Sabina Lovibond, Iris Murdoch scholar, Emeritus Fellow at Worcester College.

First impressions of Oxford/the University?

Oxford is as magical and thrilling as anyone could suspect. Living for a month in Oxford, I experience this exchange very intensely, as time goes by very quickly here, as there is never a dull moment, and a lot of work. The city is peaceful, restful and genuine. The Oxford community, both the French researchers and doctoral students at the Maison Française and the international students, are friendly, caring, and extremely respectful. It is an enchanting and invigorating time to live in Oxford for the month!