Skip to main content

Trinity College Dublin, The University of Dublin

Menu Search


Trinity College Dublin By using this website you consent to the use of cookies in accordance with the Trinity cookie policy. For more information on cookies see our cookie policy.

      
Profile Photo

Dr. Ashley Harris

Assistant Professor in French (French)
      
Profile Photo

Dr. Ashley Harris

Assistant Professor in French (French)

 harrisa6@tcd.ie

 


Dr Ashley Harris is Assistant Professor in the French department in Trinity College Dublin which she joined in 2023. She is currently spearheading the new French for Teachers Upskilling postgraduate programme at TCD, after having secured national funding from the Department of Education and Youth. Prior to this, she held full-time posts in Queen's University Belfast (3 years), University of Surrey (1 year) and University of Stirling (1 year). Between her PhD and coming back into academia, she worked as Strategic Advisor in the UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office. Ashley's research focuses primarily on twentieth- and twenty-first-century French and Francophone culture, politics, and society. She is particularly interested in sociocultural approaches and questions of equality, representation and identity in contemporary France. Harris has published various articles on the concept of the écrivain.e médiatique, using Virginie Despentes, Michel Houellebecq and Frédéric Beigbeder as case studies. She has a forthcoming monograph on these figures, which analyses the influence of mass media and mediatisation on contemporary French authorship and the gendered nature of literary fame in France today. Previously, Ashley was Postdoctoral Research Fellow on the AHRC Remembering Empire impact programme which sought to help the public explore questions of memory and identity through representations of French Algeria, the war for independence and the subsequent migration of the pieds-noirs. Her recent research studies mainstream and grassroots representations of the banlieues, on which she has published several articles and is co-editing a special issue.
Language Skill Reading Skill Writing Skill Speaking
English Fluent Fluent Fluent
French Fluent Fluent Fluent
Spanish Medium Medium Basic
Ashley Harris, Media, Gender and Contemporary French Authorship: Houellebecq, Despentes, Beigbeder, écrivains médiatiques, Peter Lang, Oxford, Peter Lang: European Connections: Oxford, 2025, Book, SUBMITTED
Revisioning the banlieues: Shifting from mainstream to grassroots, from segregation to integration in, editor(s)Claire Mouflard, Habib Zanzana, Mazia Caporale , Gender in the Banlieues, Lexington Press, 2024, [Ashley Harris], Book Chapter, ACCEPTED
Ashley Harris, Precarious Peripheries or Creative Centres? The Visual Cultures of the Banlieues, Nottingham French Studies, 62, (3), 2023, p334 - 352, p334-352 , Journal Article, PUBLISHED  TARA - Full Text  DOI
Ashley Harris, From the Spectacle to the Striptease: Houellebecq, Beigbeder and Media Ambivalence, Modern and Contemporary France, 30, (3), 2022, p345 - 354, p345-364 , Notes: [https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09639489.2022.2060199], Journal Article, PUBLISHED  DOI
Ashley Harris, Michel Houellebecq: Media Author, French Cultural Studies, 31, (1), 2020, p32 - 45, Notes: [https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/publications/on-the-return-of-the-media-author-michel-houellebecq-écrivain-méd-2], Journal Article, PUBLISHED  TARA - Full Text  DOI
Ashley Harris, Is the Map More Interesting than the Territory? (Post)Representation in La Carte et le territoire, Literary Geographies, 4, (2), 2018, p245-260 , Notes: [https://www.literarygeographies.net/index.php/LitGeogs/article/view/125.], Journal Article, PUBLISHED  TARA - Full Text
Ashley Harris, Michel Houellebecq"s Transmedial OEuvre: Extension of the Realm of Creative Intervention., itinéraires, 2017, Journal Article, PUBLISHED
  

Ashley Harris, "Who are we? New portraits of the banlieues parisiennes in Nous by Alice Diop", Imaginaries, 15, (2), 2025, Journal Article, PUBLISHED

  


Ashley's expertise is in French and Francophone studies, with particular focus on the study of twentieth- and twenty-first-century French and francophone culture (including work on literature, film and art). This includes research on the impact of gender and media on authorship, francophone post-colonial contexts (particularly how French Algeria is remembered), and questions of representation and equality in the banlieues. Ashley is interested in the cross-cutting themes of representation, memory, identity, gender, race, and class. Her work applies sociocritical approaches to social and cultural phenomena. Ashley has published peer-reviewed articles in multiple high-ranking journals including Modern and Contemporary France and French Cultural Studies. She has a forthcoming monograph which consolidates an internationally recognised expertise in contemporary French authorship, gender, and the impact of mass media on literary success. Ashley has also published on the banlieues (including Lexington Press and Nottingham French Studies). Ashley is currently an editor for both Literary Encyclopaedia and the Irish Journal of French Studies. Ashley was the AHRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow on the Impact and Engagement programme `Remembering Empire' at the University of Stirling.