Louise Hardwick has been awarded a major AHRC Early Career Fellowship (£168,000) to support her research into Francophone Caribbean culture.
Her research project, Joseph Zobel: Négritude's Novelist? The Transnational Politics of a French Caribbean Author working between the Caribbean, Africa and Europe, proposes a re-reading of Martinican author Joseph Zobel’s entire body of published work and other cultural output. The research questions focus on three key areas which must be better understood in order to situate Zobel: dominant interpretations of the Negritude movement and its insights into race, diaspora, transnationalism and gender; postcolonial ecocriticism and how it informs Zobel’s economic critique of Caribbean society, and appraisals of the colonial legacy in Europe and internationally.
Louise will collaborate with leading UK institutions based in London and Birmingham to ensure that her research reaches the widest possible audience, and her project builds on the aims of the AHRC ‘Translating Cultures’ theme, exploring how cultural works play a fundamental role in informing urgent social debates on multiculturalism, tolerance and identities.