The School of Languages, Cultures, Art History and Music is pleased to announce the appointment of Professor Lisa Downing to a Chair in French, with the title Professor of French Discourses of Sexuality. Lisa is currently a professor at the University of Exeter ( http://humanities.exeter.ac.uk/modernlanguages/staff/downing/ ), and will be joining us from 1 September 2012.
Professor Downing is an expert in interdisciplinary sexuality and gender studies; French nineteenth-century culture, literature, and medicine; modern critical theory; and film philosophy. She is the author of 5 books and over 30 academic journal articles and chapters, and the editor of 9 books and special journal issues. Her latest major monograph is a study of the cultural construction of "the murderer" in modern European and North American contexts, to be published by Chicago University Press in spring 2013. She was also the recipient of a prestigious Philip Leverhulme Prize, awarded to outstanding scholars under the age of 36 who have made a substantial, internationally recognised contribution to their field of study.