Invited Researcher of DEA Programme Stay in France: from May 9th to June 11th, 2022
After undergraduate and postgraduate degrees at the University of Oxford, including a doctoral thesis on François Mauriac’s career as an intellectual, Edward Welch spent two years in Paris undertaking postdoctoral research on spatial planning and modernization in post-war France. He joined Durham University in 2001 as Lecturer then Senior Lecturer in French, before moving to the University of Aberdeen in 2013 to become Carnegie Professor of French. His work explores the radical transformation of French space and territory during the post-war period, as the country navigates decolonization and modernization, how spatial planners talk about and represent the future, and how the consequences of French modernization are captured in literary and visual culture.
The project
Title: The Imagined Futures of French Spatial Planning: Vision, Narrative, Attitude
Keywords: Post-war France, Paris, New Towns, space, territory, spatial planning, modernization, discourse, representation, photography, visual culture, literature, culture
Selected publications:
‘Build The Imaginary: Urban futures and New Towns in Post-war French spatial planning’, Journal of Urban Cultural Studies, 8.2 (2021), 167-186.
France in Flux: Space, Territory and Contemporary Culture (coédité avec Ari Blatt, 2019)
‘Objects of Dispute: Planning, Discourse and State Power in Post-war France’, French Politics, Culture and Society, 36.2 (2018), 103-125.
‘The Place of the Republic: Space, Territory and Identity around and after Charlie Hebdo’, French Cultural Studies, 27.3 (2016), 279-292.
‘Apprehending the Banlieue: Les Passagers du Roissy-Express and Spatial Enquiry in Contemporary France’, Francosphères, 3.2 (2014), 173-186.
‘“La Carte et le Territoire”: Mapping, Photography and the Visualization of Contemporary France’, Nottingham French Studies, 53.2 (2014), 186-200.
Contesting Views: The Visual Economy of France and Algeria (coécrit avec Joseph McGonagle, 2013)
‘Marc Augé, Jean Rolin and the Mapping of (Non-)place in Modern France’, Irish Journal of French Studies, 9 (2010), 49-68.
‘Stars of CCTV: Technology, Visibility and Identity in the work of Sophie Calle and Annie Ernaux’, Nottingham French Studies, 48.2 (2009), 55-67.
François Mauriac: The Making of an Intellectual (2006)
