Keynotes

Frédéric Lagrange est professeur d’études arabes à Sorbonne Université, Paris. Ses recherches portent sur l’histoire de la musique dans l’Égypte contemporaine, la dialectologie arabe et le roman arabe moderne. Ses travaux les plus récents portent sur les études culturelles, à la croisée des études de genre, de la linguistique et de la culture pop. Ses derniers volumes édités sont Culture Pop en Egypte, Entre Mainstream commercial et contestation (2020) et Les Mots du Désir : La langue de l’érotisme arabe et sa traduction (2020). Il est également traducteur de littérature arabe, classique et contemporaine. Il est actuellement directeur du CEDEJ, le centre d'études économiques, juridiques et sociales, au Caire. 

Will McMorran is Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Queen Mary University of London. He has published widely on eighteenth-century fiction, including several articles on the Marquis de Sade and a forthcoming book: Sensing Violence: Reading with the Marquis de Sade. He has also translated two novels by Sade, The 120 Days of Sodom (with Thomas Wynn) (2016) and The Marquise de Gange (2021), as well as several stories for The Penguin Book of French Short Stories (2022) and Philippe Brenot's The Story of Sex (2016). He is currently working on a translation of Thérèse philosophe (1748), a 'forbidden bestseller' of the Ancien Régime and an important influence on Sade.

Pauline Henry-Tierney is Senior Lecturer in French and Translation Studies at Newcastle University, UK. A feminist translation studies scholar, her research focuses on the translation of contemporary women’s writing in French, in particular transgressive and erotic texts. Recent publications include her monograph Translating Transgressive Texts: Gender, Sexuality and the Body in Contemporary Women’s Writing in French (Routledge, 2023) and various peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on the erotics of subjectivity in the translation of works from contemporary authors including Nelly Arcan, Marie Darrieussecq, and Catherine Millet. Combining feminist phenomenological perspectives on female lived experience with feminist translation theory, Dr Henry-Tierney’s other main avenue of research is the translation of Simone de Beauvoir’s philosophy, with publications including a recent co-edited volume, Translating Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex: Transnational Framing, Interpretation, and Impact (Routledge, 2023).

Petra Van Brabandt is a feminist philosopher. She is head of the research department at Sint Lucas Antwerpen – School of Arts KdG University of Applied Sciences and Arts, where she teaches semiotics and cultural criticism and supervises PhD research in the arts. She writes on art & politics, art & pornography, and wet aesthetics.