Teaching interests

My undergraduate teaching interests focus on a set of courses on modern French society and culture: Modern and Contemporary France (first year), Education Debates in Modern France (final year) and Media in France (final year). I also offer MA courses on cultural policy debates, both within the French department for students who read French, and also for the Centre for the Study of Cultural Policy, where I have taught a comparative course in English on cultural policy issues in France and Germany, and am currently developing a module on 'implicit' cultural policies.

Research Interests

My research interests lie broadly in the same areas as my teaching. I have worked on contemporary French thought, and in particular on the writings of the historian and cultural theorist Michel de Certeau, on whom I have published a book (Michel de Certeau: Interpretation and its Other, Polity Press, 1995 & Stanford University Press, 1996). I have  explored debates in French cultural policy over the last 40 years, completing a historically conceived reader designed to introduce the key interventions in this debate to an anglophone readership (French Cultural Policy Debates: A Reader, Routledge, 2002), and writing a monograph on three French intellectuals who have engaged practically with issues of public policy and culture (Between Cultural Theory and Policy: The Cultural Policy Thinking of Pierre Bourdieu, Michel de Certeau and Régis Debray, Centre for Cultural Policy Studies, University of Warwick, Research Papers no. 7, 2004). I have just completed a book on the relations between public intellectuals and policy processes in France. I am now undertaking research into education policy and debate in contemporary France.

Selected publications

MONOGRAPHS:   

Intellectuals, Culture and Public Policy in France: Approaches from the Left, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2010 (forthcoming)

Between Cultural Theory and Policy: The Cultural Policy Thinking of Pierre Bourdieu, Michel de Certeau and Régis Debray, Centre for Cultural Policy Studies, University of Warwick, Research Papers no. 7, 2004.

Michel de Certeau: Interpretation and its Other, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995 and Stanford University Press, 1996.

EDITED  BOOKS:

Intellectuals and Cultural Policy, ed. J. Ahearne and O. Bennett, London: Routledge 2007.

French Cultural Policy Debates: A Reader (selected, edited, translated and introduced), London: Routledge, 2002

EDITED JOURNAL ISSUES:

International Journal of Cultural Policy, 15/2, 2009, special edition on 'implicit cultural policies' (with O. Bennett)

International Journal of Cultural Policy, 9/2, 2003, special edition on French and German cultural policies, guest editor J. Ahearne

BOOK CHAPTERS AND ARTICLES:

'Cultural Policy Implicit and Explicit: A Distinction and Some Uses', International Journal of Cultural Policy, 15/2, 2009, pp. 141-53.

'Public Intellectuals and Cultural Policy in France', in Ahearne and Bennett (ed.), Intellectuals and Cultural Policy (London: Routledge, 2007), pp. 209-25.

'Towards and Beyond The Practice of Everyday Life: The Cultural Policy Thinking of Michel de Certeau, 1973-1984', in Michel de Certeau: Geschichte-Kultur-Religion, ed. M. Fussel (Constance: Universitatsverlag Konstanz, 2007) 

'Public Intellectuals within a "Multiple Streams" Model of the Cultural Policy Process', International Journal of Cultural Policy, 12/1, March 2006

‘La complexité dans les réseaux’, in C. Héber-Suffrin (ed.), Partager les savoirs, construire le lien, pref. M. Serres (Lyon: Chronique Sociale, 2001), pp. 49-55.

‘Les pratiques pour tisser ensemble une culture’, in C. Héber-Suffrin (ed.), Partager les savoirs, construire le lien, pref. M. Serres (Lyon: Chronique Sociale, 2001), pp. 56-62..

‘Questions of cultural policy in the thought of Michel de Certeau, 1968-1972’, in South Atlantic Quarterly, 100/2, Spring 2001, pp. 447-63.

Introduction to section ‘Other Languages: Speech and Writing’ in G. Ward (ed.), The Certeau Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), pp. 153-7.

‘French cultural policy past and present: essay review’, in French Cultural Studies, February 1999, 129-36.

‘“Vers un agir complexe”: the  Mouvement des Réseaux d'Echanges Réciproques des Savoirs and the writings of Edgar Morin’, in French Cultural Studies, October 1997, pp. 341-55.

‘The shattering of Christianity and the articulation of belief’ [on Michel de Certeau], in New Blackfriars, Nov 1996, pp. 493-504.

 ‘Feux persistants: Entretien sur Michel de Certeau’ (with Luce Giard, Dominique Julia, Pierre Mayol, Olivier Mongin), in Esprit, March 1996, pp. 131-154.

TRANSLATIONS:

M. de Certeau, ‘The World of the Vowel’, in G. Ward, The Certeau Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), pp. 177-87.

See also, under ‘Books’, French Cultural Policy Debates: A Reader.