Dr Madeleine Chalmers

Before joining Leicester in 2023, I completed undergraduate and postgraduate studies in French at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge and held teaching positions at Wadham College (University of Oxford) and Durham University.

My research revives modern French avant-garde writings to engage critically with twenty-first-century questions in the fields of science, technology, and epistemology. By uncovering unacknowledged genealogies for our current preoccupations, I hope to articulate how highly particular texts function on their own terms – in their time and place – while allowing them a presence, now and in the future.

My first monograph, French Technological Thought and the Nonhuman Turn (forthcoming with Edinburgh University Press, 2024) traces a genealogy of thinking and writing about technology, while my current research project – DIY Epistemologies – deepens my exploration of eclecticism and bricolage in our digital context.

Selected publications

Books

French Technological Thought and the Nonhuman Turn (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2024).

Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles

“Do it Yourself: Bernard Stiegler as Mystagogic Bricoleur,” in Philosophy Today, 68.3 (2024), 567-84

“Unconjugating Community with Fernand Deligny and Jean-Luc Nancy,” Paragraph, 47.2 (2024), 125-41

“Introduction: French Perspectives on Conflict,” in French Perspectives on Conflict, special issue of Journal of Romance Studies, Vol. 22, No. 3 (2022), 303-09

“(Ré)apprentissage profond: Raymond Roussel face au nonhuman turn,” in La Revue des lettres modernes: Raymond Roussel 7 (2022), 73-88

“The Surreal Technics of André Breton and Gilbert Simondon,” French Studies, 75.2 (2021), 205-20

“Living as We Dream: Automatism and Automation from Surrealism to Stiegler,” Nottingham French Studies, 59.3 (2020), 368-83

“Voice and Presence in L’Ève future and Le Surmâle,” Dix-Neuf, 22.1-2 (2018), 115-29

Book Chapters

“Bricolage, Wild Thought, and Automated Knowledge,” in TheHuman and the Machine in Literature and Culture: Cultures of Automation, forthcoming with Routledge.

“AI Narratives and the French Touch,” in Imagining AI: How the World Sees Intelligent Machines, ed. by Stephen Cave and Kanta Dihal (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023), 39-54

“Verbal Techniques,” in The Routledge Companion to Surrealism, ed. by Kirsten Strom (New York: Routledge, 2022), 90-97

“Villiers de l’Isle-Adam,” in The Literary Encyclopedia, ed. Robert Clark et al.,<https://www.litencyc.com> (2020)

Edited Journal Issues

French Perspectives on Conflict, special issue of Journal of Romance Studies, Vol. 22, No. 3 2022).

Translations

Emmanuel Falque, “Wrestling with the Angel,” in Fragility and Transcendence: Essays on the Thought of Jean-Louis Chrétien, ed. by Jeffrey Bloechl (Washington, DC: Rowman & Littlefield, 2023), 63-81

I would be delighted to hear from prospective graduate students who share my interests, in particular:

• modern and contemporary French literature and thought
• historic avant-gardes
• intersections between science, technology, and culture

Undergraduate

I convene and teach the following modules:

• FR1014 20th Century Literature
• FR2018 French Language (Post-Beginners)
• FR2030 Politics, Technology, and Ecology in Francophone Culture
• FR2045 Media and Cultural Practices in France

I teach on:

• MS3013 Media and the Body

I supervise:

• ML3176 Extended Essay in Modern Languages

Postgraduate

I am programme director for the MA in Media, Culture, and Society (2025 entry).

Selected awards

2023    Durham University Discretionary Award for Excellent Contribution

2023    Paragraph Essay Prize: ‘Unconjugating Community with Fernand Deligny and Jean-Luc Nancy’

My research interests include:

• intellectual history
• science and technology studies
• mystic theology
• avant-gardes
• speculative fiction
• digital and media studies

In October 2024, I collaborated with the Phoenix Cinema and Arts Centre to produce a surrealism mini-season, culminating in a Surrealist Soirée event, to celebrate the centenary of the publication of André Breton's Surrealist Manifesto.

Leicester celebrates century of Surrealism

Education

• D.Phil. Medieval and Modern Languages (French), University of Oxford, 2021
• M.Phil. European, Latin American and Comparative Literatures and Cultures, University of Cambridge, 2017
• B.A. (Hons.) Modern Languages: French, University of Oxford, 2016

Further qualifications

• SEDA Supporting Learning Award, University of Oxford, 2019
• Diploma in Translation, Chartered Institute of Linguists, 2016
• Online Course in Subtitling, University College London, 2015