Email: a.blin-rolland@bangor.ac.uk

Location: room 417, 3rd floor, New Arts building

Dr Armelle Blin-Rolland joined Bangor University as Lecturer in French and Francophone Studies in 2014. Before then, she was a Teaching Fellow at the University of Bath, and a Lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University and the University of Leicester. She holds a PhD in French and Francophone Studies from Bangor University (2011), an MA in European Languages and Cultures from Bangor University (2007), and a BA in German from the Universite de Bretagne Occidentale, Brest (2005). 

Dr Armelle Blin-Rolland's research specialisms include: French and Francophone ecocriticism and environmental humanities, with a focus on environmental violence, resistance and justice; Modern Languages in the Environmental Humanities; text/image and bande dessinée studies; adaptation and intermediality; and Breton Francophone comic art from postcolonial and ecofeminist perspectives. She has published articles on these areas in journals including European Comic Art, Modern Languages Open, Modern and Contemporary France, Studies in Comics and Studies in French Cinema. She is the author of Adapted Voices: Transpositions of Céline’s ‘Voyage au bout de la nuit’ and Queneau’s ‘Zazie dans le métro’ (Oxford: Legenda, 2015). She has co-edited a special issue of European Comic Art on ‘Comics & Adaptation’ (stemming from a conference she co-organised at the University Leicester), and a special issue of Studies in Comics on ‘Comics & Nation’ (also stemming from a conference she co-organised, at Bangor University). She is review co-editor for European Comic Art. 

Her current research project is entitled 'Greening Modern Languages: Narrative, Space and Environmental Justice in Contemporary France, 1945 to Today', and was awarded funding by the British Academy/Leverhulme Trust Small Grant Scheme in 2023-2024 (SRG22\220097). This project investigates the relationship between narrative, space and the environment in France since 1945, with a focus on ‘hyper-sites’ of environmental violence and injustice (nuclear sites, factory farms, industrial slaughterhouses, zoos, toxic landscapes, borders). It aims to analyse the cultural narratives and spatial dynamics that have shaped relationships to the nonhuman in contemporary France, and modes of resistance against anthropocentric, gendered, (neo-)colonial, nationalistic and capitalist divisions of space. The corpus comprises a range of media, as well as scientific writings, direct action, political discourse and material sites. The project develops an ecopolitics of space from the perspectives of multispecies, decolonial, feminist and disabled ecologies, in exposing and contesting environmentally unjust narratives and their fast and slow impacts on bodies and territories, and promoting modes of understanding and sharing territory as more-than-human. Beyond the French context, this leads to a consideration of the role of Modern Languages in the Environmental Humanities, in terms of differences, resonances and (un)translatability in environmental concepts across cultures, and the discipline’s part in collective action towards meaningful sustainability. As part of this project, she has co-organised an International Online Conference on 'Greening Modern Languages Research and Teaching' in March 2023, leading to the creation of a website that features a multilingual lexicon of environmental terms across cultures and pedagogical resources for fostering ecological awareness in the world language classroom (see https://www.ecomodlang.com/); and an online seminar series entitled ‘Récits des vivants / More-than-human Narratives’ (February-July 2023), during which artists and activists discussed ways in which their work explores environmental and animal issues (click here for more details). Recordings are available to view on the series' YouTube channel.

Dr Blin-Rolland has begun to explore local benefits and impacts of this research with her follow-on project Cwricwlwm Ieithoedd Modern Gwyrddach i Gymru / A Greener Modern Languages Curriculum for Wales, for which she worked in partnership with GwE Global Futures and award-winning French graphic artist Anne Defreville. The project, which is funded by Bangor University’s Innovation and Impact Award Scheme, aims to develop creative approaches to fostering environmental sustainability in conjunction with international language learning, in line with the holistic ethos of the New Curriculum for Wales, and the Well-being of Future Generations Act. For more information see https://www.ecomodlang.com/resources/cwricwlwm-ieithoedd-modern-gwyrddach-i-gymru-a-greener-modern-languages-curriculum-for-wales/

Undergraduate teaching

LXE-2025: Reading Fantastic Literatures (2nd year)

LXF-2101: Paris - Centres and Margins

LXE-3011: Languages and Ecologies (Final year)

LXF-3122: Postcolonial France (Final year)

LCF/LZF-1001 & 1002: Advanced French 1 and 2 (1st year)

LCF/LZF-2020 & 2040: French language skills (2nd year)

LCF/LZF-3020, 3030 & 3040: French language skills (Final year)

Postgraduate teaching:

LXM-4035: French Film & Comic Adaptation

LXM-4001: Modes of Critical Theory (team-taught)

LXM-4002: Research Methods (team-taught)

LXM-4031: Critical Theory in Practice (team-taught)

Teaching qualification

FHEA