Dr Fabien Arribert-Narce
Senior Lecturer; Head of French and Francophone Studies
- Edinburgh Futures Institute Affiliate
- Film and Intermediality Studies
- French and Francophone Studies; Department of European Languages and Cultures; School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures
Contact details
Address
- Street
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Room 3.52, 50 George Square
- City
- Edinburgh
- Post code
- EH8 9LH
Availability
Office Hours (teaching weeks only):
Monday, 3.10pm-4pm, or by appointment
Background
After completing his AHRC-funded PhD in French at the University of Kent and Université Paris III–Sorbonne nouvelle (2011), Dr Fabien Arribert-Narce successively worked as a Teaching Fellow in French at University College London (2011–12), as a JSPS Postdoctoral Fellow at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (2012-13) and the University of Tokyo (2013-14), and as an Associate Professor in French at Aoyama Gakuin University, Tokyo (2014-16). He joined the University of Edinburgh as a Lecturer in French in September 2016, and was a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Asian and Pacific Studies (CAPS) based in Seikei University, Tokyo, from January 2019 to January 2020. He was a Visiting Professor at Meiji University, Tokyo in Spring/Summer 2023.
He is the author of "Photobiographies: pour une écriture de notation de la vie (Roland Barthes, Denis Roche, Annie Ernaux)" (Honoré Champion, 2014) and "Post-japonismes: images du Japon dans le monde francophone depuis 1970" (De Gruyter Brill, 2026), and editor of "L’Autobiographie entre autres. Écrire la vie aujourd’hui" (Peter Lang, 2013); "Réceptions de la culture japonaise en France depuis 1945. Paris-Tokyo-Paris: détours par le Japon" (Honoré Champion, 2016); "The Pleasure in/of the Text: About the Joys and Perversities of Reading" (Peter Lang, 2021); "Michaël Ferrier: un écrivain du corail" (Honoré Champion, 2021); "Le quotidien au Japon et en Occident" ("Revue des Sciences Humaines", vol. 345, Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2022); "Writing the World with Michaël Ferrier" ("Contemporary French and Francophone Studies", vol. 27, n°5, Routledge, 2023); "Intermedial Encounters Between Image, Music and Text: With and Beyond Roland Barthes" (Peter Lang, 2024); "Annie Ernaux Across Borders" (De Gruyter Brill, 2027); "Theories and Practices of Intermediality: From Medieval Manuscripts to Video Games" (Peter Lang, 2027).
Qualifications
BA (Grenoble); MA (Kent); PhD (Kent; Paris 3-Sorbonne nouvelle)
Responsibilities & affiliations
Head of French and Francophone Studies (July-December 2026)
Edinburgh Futures Institute Affiliate
Co-founder and editor of the EUP series Edinburgh Critical Studies in World Literature and Intermediality
Editorial Board member, book series "Annie Ernaux International Studies" (De Gruyter Brill)
Programme co-director, MSc and PhD Intermediality: Literature, Film & the Arts in Dialogue
Co-director, LLC Research Strand in Intermediality
https://blogs.ed.ac.uk/intermediality/research/
Lead Coordinator of the Research Partnerships in Intermedial Studies between the University of Edinburgh and Meiji University (Tokyo, Japan), Linnaeus University (Sweden), and Aix-Marseille University (France)
External Examiner for the MA Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies in Modern Languages at Birkbeck, University of London (2020-2024)
Undergraduate teaching
- 20th and 21st century literature, thought and visual culture
- French 1B: “France and French Literature & Culture since 1940” (ELCF08006), Course Organiser; 1st year UG core course
- “Comparative Literature in a European and Global Perspective” (ELCC10022), Course Organiser; 3rd/4th year DELC UG option
- “Images of Japan in French and Francophone Culture from the 19th to the 21st century” (ELCF10077), Course Organiser; 3rd/4th year UG option
Postgraduate teaching
- “MSc Intermediality: Literature, Film & the Arts in Dialogue”, Programme Co-Director (https://www.ed.ac.uk/studying/postgraduate/degrees/index.php?r=site/view&edition=2020&id=987)
- “Literature and Photography in the 20th century” (CLLC11186), Course Organiser; MSc option course
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Lecture on Literary Translingualism, MSc Comparative Literature, “Theories and Methods of Literary Study” (CLLC11024); core course
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Lectures on Intermediality and Photo-Literature, MSc Intermediality, “Theories of Intermediality” (CLLC11192); core course
Open to PhD supervision enquiries?
Yes
Areas of interest for supervision
- Visual Culture, Intermediality and Word & Image Studies
- Comparative Literature
- Modern and Contemporary French & Francophone Studies
Current PhD students supervised
- William Puckett, PhD in Comparative Literature; thesis title: 'Posthuman Time and the Space of Hope: Images of Spacio-temporal Overlap and Becoming in Anglophone African Diasporic Fiction'
- Xingtong Zhou, PhD in Comparative Literature; thesis title: 'Writing Self Photographically: Verbal Imaging of Memory, Emotions, and Photography in the Work of Eileen Chang and Yoko Tawada'
- Sirui Xu, PhD Intermediality; thesis title: 'Art as Life, Life as Art: Screening the Lives and Works of Artists from 1968 to 2023'
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Yufeng Li, PhD in Film Studies; thesis title: 'Representing the Posthuman: CGI Characters in Contemporary World Cinema'
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Weiyi Yan, PhD Intermediality; thesis title: 'An Intermedial Reinterpretation of Stream of Consciousness in World Cinema'
Past PhD students supervised
- Matthis Hervieux, PhD in Comparative Literature; thesis title: 'Franco-Japanese Encounters in Intermedial Works by Roland Barthes, Michel Butor and Dany Laferrière' (viva passed in July 2025)
- Fidan Cheikosman, PhD in Comparative Literature; thesis title: 'Gendered Turkishness in Everyday Istanbul Through Elif Shafak’s and Orhan Pamuk’s Literature from an Aesthetic, Feminist, and Sociocultural Perspective' (viva passed in July 2023)
- Beata Migut, PhD in Comparative Literature; thesis title: 'Exophonic Word and Image Relations in the Work of Vladimir Nabokov, Yoko Tawada and Bruno Schulz' (viva passed in April 2022)
- Luyue Wang, PhD in Comparative Literature; thesis title: 'East Asian Culture and Visual Representation in José Juan Tablada’s Poetry' (viva passed in April 2021)
Research summary
- Intermediality and image & text studies
- Life writing and photography
- Comparative literary and cultural studies, with an emphasis on Japan and the francophone world
- Photo-literature from the 19th to the 21st century
- 20th and 21st century French & Francophone literature, visual culture and critical theory
- Responses to Japan in Western literature, art and culture from the 19th to the 21st century
- Literary and artistic responses to the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan and Europe
- Everyday and Archive studies
- Disaster studies
- The work of Roland Barthes; Annie Ernaux; Michaël Ferrier
Dr Arribert-Narce would welcome postgraduate applications in any of these areas.
Project activity
Dr Arribert-Narce’s research to date has primarily focused on life writing and photography, intermediality and image & text studies, comparative literary and cultural studies with an emphasis on Japan and the francophone world.
His first monograph "Photobiographies: pour une écriture de notation de la vie" (Honoré Champion, 2014) analyses the interactions between literature and photography. It examines more specifically the literary genre of photobiography by analysing the works of three contemporary authors, Roland Barthes, Denis Roche and Annie Ernaux. In an attempt to grasp the concrete reality of their lives, these authors follow the model of photographic recording and produce a notational form of "life-writing" that significantly challenges traditional autobiography. This body of work therefore belongs to the paradigm of analogue photography, which is anchored in the 20th century and on the verge of disappearing at the dawn of the 21st. Dr Arribert-Narce recently published a peer-reviewed article in a/b: Auto/Biography Studies ("Narrating Fukushima: The Genre of ‘Notes’ as a Literary Response to the 3/11 Triple Disaster", Aug. 2021), and two peer-reviewed articles on the uses of photographic archives in the work of Annie Ernaux (Nobel Prize in Literature 2022): "Ekphraseis photographiques dans Mémoire de fille" (Fabula.org, May 2020); "Annie Ernaux’s ‘photojournal’ in Écrire la vie: Photo-Diaristic Archives as a Model of Life-Writing’" Nottingham French Studies, 61.2 (2022), pp. 183-196. He co-edited the multi-author volume "L’Autobiographie entre autres. Écrire la vie aujourd’hui" (Peter Lang, 2013), and in October 2024, he co-organised with Dr Elise Hugueny-Léger (St Andrews) the first international, solely English-speaking conference focusing on the work of Annie Ernaux (Nobel Prize in Literature 2022): https://www.annie-ernaux.org/conferences/2024-edinburgh-st-andrews/. An edited volume emanating from this conference will be published by De Gruyter Brill in 2027 ("Annie Ernaux Across Borders").
His second monograph, "Post-japonismes: images du Japon dans le monde francophone depuis 1970", will be published by De Gruyter Brill in December 2026: https://brill.com/display/title/74224. It analyses the reception of Japanese culture by French writers and film directors since 1970. Unlike traditional "japonisme", characterised by its exoticist emphasis on the extraordinary, post-war responses to Japan have tended to focus on the "infra-ordinary", or the banal aspects of everyday life. The aim of this study – which includes sections focusing on the works of Roland Barthes, Chris Marker, Philippe Forest, Michaël Ferrier, and on post-Fukushima writings – is therefore to explore these new forms of "japonisme" and to determine to what extent they constitute an extension or a repudiation of the orientalist tradition. As part of this project, which received funding from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Dr Arribert-Narce co-organised several international and interdisciplinary conferences in Tokyo: "Paris-Tokyo-Paris: Responses to Japan in French Art, Culture and Theory since 1945" (Maison franco-japonaise, September 2013); "Approaches to the Everyday in Japan and the West" (Aoyama Gakuin University, December 2015); "Gauging the Distance: On the Challenges of Writing about Pre- and Post-Fukushima Japan from a Western Perspective" (Seikei University, Nov. 2019). And in Edinburgh: "Michaël Ferrier: un écrivain du corail" (UoE, September 2017); "Post-Fukushima Art and Literature in Japan and the West" (UoE, September 2017); "Fifteen Years after Fukushima: Eco-critical Models and Memory of the Disaster" (March 2026). He has also edited several multi-author volumes related to this research area: "Réceptions de la culture japonaise en France depuis 1945. Paris-Tokyo-Paris: détours par le Japon" (Honoré Champion, 2016); "Michaël Ferrier: un écrivain du corail" (Honoré Champion, 2021); "Le quotidien au Japon et en Occident" ("Revue des Sciences Humaines", vol. 345, Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2022).
An important strand of Dr Arribert-Narce’s teaching and research focuses on intermediality and photo-literature, and more specifically on the work of Roland Barthes from an intermedial perspective. At Aoyama Gakuin University (Tokyo), he co-organised the workshop ‘Roland Barthes, l’écriture et la vie’, which marked the centenary of Barthes in Japan, and the one-day conference ‘Chacun son Barthes’ in December 2019. More recently, he co-edited the multi-author volumes "The Pleasure in/of the Text: About the Joys and Perversities of Reading" (Peter Lang, 2021) and "Intermedial Encounters Between Image, Music and Text" (Peter Lang, 2024), which largely focus on Barthes’s work. He is currently co-editing the volume "Theories and Practices of Intermediality: From Medieval Manuscripts to Video Games" (under contract and forthcoming with Peter Lang in 2027).
His current research project focuses on transnational travel writing across languages, cultures and media.
-‘Vers une écriture synesthésique du (tout-) monde: intermédialité et multilinguisme dans les carnets de voyage de Michaël Ferrier’, "Worlding Francophone/graph: Literary and Artistic Modes of (Non)belonging", International Conference, University of Gothenburg, 8-9 June 2026
-‘Mapping New Territories in Intermedial Studies’, public roundtable with Fabien Arribert-Narce, Jørgen Bruhn, Ágnes Pethő and Irina Rajewsky, University of L’Aquila/online, 5 December 2025
-‘Opera and AI: Yūrei - Ghost of the AI Empire’, public roundtable with Fabien Arribert-Narce, Jesper Larsson, Caterina Moruzzi and Marion Schmid, Skissernas Museum, Lund University, 21 October 2025
-‘Les villes intermédiales de Michaël Ferrier’, International Conference ‘La ville intermédiale / Intermediality in the City’, Aix-Marseille University, Aix-en-Provence, 5-6 September 2025
-‘Roland (singular) Barthes (plural) in a Global Context’, International Conference ‘Global Barthes’, Leeds University, 27-28 June 2025
-‘Reclaiming a Woman’s Story in Annie Ernaux’s The Super 8 Years’, Centre for Intermedial and Multimodal Studies, Linnaeus University, 4 December 2024
-‘Barthes and the Haiku: In Search of the Absolute’, International Symposium "Global Barthes", Meiji University, Tokyo, 18 May 2024
-‘Michaël Ferrier au Japon, les Japon de Michaël Ferrier’, "Michaël Ferrier, Transnational Novelist", International One-Day Colloquium, Birkbeck, University of London, 18 March 2024
-‘Intermedial Life (Re-)Writing: The Face as a Feminist Interface in Annie Ernaux’s "The Super 8 Years" (2022)’, ‘Masks and Screens’, Fourth Workshop of the Research Partnership in Intermedia Studies between the University of Edinburgh and Meiji University; Meiji University, Tokyo, 17 December 2023
-‘Dazzling Rem(a)inders: Photographs and/of Ruins (J. Derrida, D. Roche, O. Pamuk)’, Second Workshop of the Research Partnership in Intermedia Studies between the University of Edinburgh and Meiji University; Meiji University, Tokyo, 18 December 2022
-Keynote speech, International conference ‘Tokyo Stories: Writing the World with Michaël Ferrier’, Winthrop-King Institute, Florida State University, 21-22 March 2022
-Public interview of Tokyo-based French writer Michaël Ferrier, Workshop 'Autour de Michaël Ferrier' (ミカエル・フェリエ - 作家、中央大学教授 を囲んで), Tohoku University, Sendai, 20 December 2019
-‘Barthes intermédial: l’empire des signifiants’, International Conference ‘Chacun son Barthes’「それぞれのバルト」, Aoyama Gakuin University, Tokyo, 14 December 2019
-‘Defining Literary Post-Japonisme(s), Before and After Fukushima’, International Conference ‘Gauging the Distance: On the Challenges of Writing about Pre- and Post-Fukushima Japan from a Western Perspective’, Seikei University, Tokyo, 23 November 2019
-‘Légendes de jeunes filles: fixer l’absolu de la mémoire photo(bio)graphique dans Mémoire de fille d’Annie Ernaux et L’Amant de Marguerite Duras’, Invited Lecture, Department of French Studies, University of Tokyo, 12 November 2019
-‘Facing the Wave: Literary Responses to the 3.11 Triple Disaster in Japan and Europe’, International Conference ‘The Aesthetic Mechanisms of Ocean Representations In British, American, and Asian Contexts’, Seikei University, Tokyo, 13-14 July 2019
-‘Enfance, photographies et auto-biographie dans Roland Barthes par Roland Barthes’, Invited Lecture, Sophia University, Tokyo, 26 June 2019
-‘Narrating Fukushima in France and Japan’, ‘Forum in Life Writing’ Panel on ‘Narrating Disaster’, 134th MLA Annual Convention, Chicago, 4 January 2019
-‘La photo-littérature en France au 20e siècle’, Guest lecture, Seoul National University, 16 April 2018
-‘Écriture et photographie dans l’oeuvre d’Annie Ernaux’, Invited Lecture, Chuo University, Tokyo, 18 April 2017
-‘Ekphraseis photographiques dans Mémoire de fille’, International Conference ‘Annie Ernaux, les écritures à l’oeuvre’, Université de Picardie Jules Verne, Amiens, 16-17 March 2017
-‘Le plaisir de la signifiance dans L’Empire des signes’, Invited Lecture, Inalco, Paris, 8 March 2016
-‘Du watakushi-shôsetsu au “roman du Je”: influences du Japon sur l’écriture (de vie) de Philippe Forest’, International Conference ‘Philippe Forest: une vie à écrire’, Paris, 14-16 January 2016
-‘Writing Fukushima in France and Japan’, Invited Lecture, Birkbeck, University of London, 3 November 2015
-‘Le goût du quotidien dans la pensée, la littérature et la culture visuelle françaises depuis 1945’, Invited Lecture, Department of French Studies, University of Tokyo, 21 July 2015
-‘“A few details, a few preferences, a few inflections”: Roland Barthes’s Auto/biographic Collections’, International Conference ‘Roland Barthes at 100’, University of Cardiff, 30-31 March 2015
-‘Images du Japon dans la littérature et le cinéma français (1970-2015): un goût pour le quotidien’, International Conference ‘Reorienting Cultural Flows: Engagements between France and East/Southeast Asia’, The Winthrop-King Institute for Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, Florida State University, 26-28 February 2015
-‘Intimate Archives as a Model of Life-Writing: Annie Ernaux’s “Photo-Diary” in Ecrire la vie’, International and Interdisciplinary Conference ‘Intimate Archives: Photography and Life-Writing’, Wolfson College, University of Oxford, 29 November 2013
-‘French Writers and Film-Makers in Japan (1945-2013): A Taste for the Everyday’, British Comparative Literature Association (BCLA) Triennial Conference on ‘Migration’, University of Essex, 8-11 July 2013
-‘Photobiography in France since 1975: New Trends and Strategies’, 127th MLA Annual Convention, Seattle, 5-8 January 2012
-‘French Photobiography in the Era of Digital Technology’, Interdisciplinary Conference on ‘Technologies of the Self: New Departures in Self-Inscription’, University College Cork, 2-3 September 2011
-‘Une guérilla contre le temps: les archives photobiographiques de Denis Roche’, 24th Congress of the Conseil International d’Études Francophones, Montreal, 27 June-4 July 2010 (paper awarded the CIEF’s ‘Prix Jeune Chercheur 2010’, for the best paper given by a doctoral student that year)
-‘Taking Signs for What They Are: Roland Barthes and Chris Marker on Japan’, National Institute of Japanese Literature, Tokyo, 13 November 2009
-‘Ça (ne) se fait pas: on Margins in Contemporary French and Francophone Literature’, International Conference co-organised by Fabien Arribert-Narce and Madeleine Banatvala, University of Edinburgh, 9 October 2026
-‘Fifteen Years after Fukushima: Eco-critical Models and Memory of the Disaster’, International Conference, University of Edinburgh, 27 March 2026, <https://llc.ed.ac.uk/french-and-francophone-studies/quinze-ans-apres-fukushima>
-‘Intermediality and Care’, International Conference, University of Edinburgh, 12-13 March 2026, <https://blogs.ed.ac.uk/intermediality/events/>
-‘World Literature and Intermediality’, International and Interdisciplinary workshop, featuring the launch of the EUP book series, Edinburgh Critical Studies in World Literature and Intermediality, University of Edinburgh, 13-14 March 2025
-‘1974-2024 : Annie Ernaux’s Years. A Global Perspective’, International Conference co-organised by Fabien Arribert-Narce and Élise Hugueny-Léger, University of Edinburgh and University of St Andrews, 3-5 October 2024; <https://www.annie-ernaux.org/conferences/2024-edinburgh-st-andrews/>
-‘Theories and Practices of Intermediality Today ’, organised in partnership with Meiji University (Tokyo, Japan), Linnaeus University (Sweden) and Aix-Marseille University (France), with guests from IULM Milano (Italy); University of Edinburgh, 14-15 March 2024, <https://blogs.ed.ac.uk/intermediality/events/>
-‘Intercultural Transfers and Translations Across Media’, Third Workshop of the Research Partnership in Intermedia Studies between the University of Edinburgh and Meiji University, Tokyo; University of Edinburgh, 10 March 2023, <https://blogs.ed.ac.uk/intermediality/events/>
-‘Intermedial Encounters Between Image, Music and Text – With and Beyond Roland Barthes’, Inaugural Workshop of the Research Partnership in Intermedia Studies between the University of Edinburgh and Meiji University, Tokyo; University of Edinburgh, 16 March 2022, <https://edin.ac/3hQhkFV>
-‘Behind The Masks: Representations of the Face in Japanese and Western European Literature and Theatre from the Early Modern Period to the Present’, University of Edinburgh, 13-14 December 2018, <https://www.ed.ac.uk/literatures-languages-cultures/events/behind-the-masks>
-‘The World After Fukushima’, a series of events on Fukushima and the future of nuclear energy, University of Edinburgh, 13-15 September 2017, <http://www.ed.ac.uk/literatures-languages-cultures/events/events-archive/the-world-after-fukushima>
The two following international conferences were organised as part of this project:
‘Michaël Ferrier: un écrivain du corail’, 14 September 2017, <http://www.ed.ac.uk/files/atoms/files/colloque_international_michael_ferrier_sm.pdf>
‘Post-Fukushima Art and Literature in Japan and the West’, 15 September 2017, <http://www.ed.ac.uk/files/atoms/files/international_conference_post-fukushima_art_and_literature_sm.pdf>
-‘Approaches to the Everyday in Japan and the West’, International and Interdisciplinary Conference co-organised with Prof. Koichiro Hamano, Aoyama Gakuin University, Tokyo, 5-6 December 2015, <http://www.cl.aoyama.ac.jp/french/2015/conference/quot-programme-f.html>
-‘Roland Barthes, l’écriture et la vie’, International Conference marking the Centenary of Roland Barthes in Japan, Aoyama Gakuin University, Tokyo, 9 November 2015, <http://www.cl.aoyama.ac.jp/french/2015/conf-roland-barthes.pdf>
-‘Paris-Tokyo-Paris: Responses to Japan in French Art, Culture and Theory since 1945’, International and Interdisciplinary Conference co-organised with Dr Kohei Kuwada (University of Tokyo) and Dr Lucy O’Meara (University of Kent), Maison Franco-japonaise, Tokyo, 6-7 September 2013, <http://www.kent.ac.uk/secl/researchcentres/eurolit/events/conferences/event2013-06-09.html>
-‘L’autobiographie en langue française au 21ème siècle’, International Conference in French studies co-organised with Dr Alain Ausoni (University of Lausanne), Reid Hall, Paris, 11 December 2010, <http://www.kent.ac.uk/secl/researchcentres/eurolit/events/conferences/autobiographie.html>