Victoria Robert

Please tell us about your research project.

My PhD's focus is on the spiritual trajectories of young girls within high-control groups in a set of five novels in contemporary American literature (The Girls by Emma Cline, The Incendiaries by R.O. Kwon, The Ash Family by Molly Dektar, The Lightness by Emily Temple and Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon). The originality of the novels is that the young girls are the one telling the story which is different from the sensationalist description of charismatic leaders that we can find in true-crime documenatries on streaming plateforms such as Netflix. The challenge of my PhD is interdisciplinarity. Indeed, my focus is on different scholarships : girlhood studies, religious studies and literature. 

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

I am one of the recipients of the GATES scholarship between the University of Grenoble-Alpes and la Maison française d’Oxford. I was awarded a scholarship to come to Oxford for a month during the Trinity Term 2026. It is a wonderful experience for me to feel like a student here in Oxford, to have access to so much material from the Bodleian Libray and to meet professors in my field (religious studies and American literature). I am able to go to the Rothermere American Institute and study in the Vere Harmsworth Library which contains the most important collection of books about American culture outside of the US. I am also very happy to join different seminars on the history of girldhood, American literature and climate fiction, Reading reception. I am going to meet Dr. Edward David for his book launch here in Oxford. His book The Spiritual Narratives of Generation Z : From Divine Disillusionment to Simple Faith is crucial to my research and it will be an honor to meet him. 

First impressions of Oxford/the University?

I live in Stephen's House which is an Anglican house that is attached to a college and I am living the full Oxford life with the formal dinners every week. I even get to know the special vocabulary of the Oxford life : punting, May Morning, collection, Bod card and so forth! Everything here makes your student life so easy and it is a pleasure to be immersed in my PhD surrounded by very welcoming people in my college and at the Maison française. And walking back at night from the library and seeing Magdalen College all light up is quite a view.