Matthis Hervieux (LèsL Rouen, MSc Edin, PhD)

Tutor in French & Francophone Studies

  • French and Francophone Studies
  • Department of European Languages and Cultures
  • School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures

Contact details

Address

Street

50 George Square
Room 2.40

City
Edinburgh
Post code

Availability

  • "Drop-in" hour: Monday 1-2pm and Thursday 10-11am. If you need to see me outside these periods, please use the link to book a meeting with me, either on campus or online.
    I do not work in June and July.

Biography

Background

I was born in Rouen, the capital of the Seine-Maritime département, and raised in small towns across the Pays de Caux, an area of Normandy stretching between the port city of Le Havre and Rouen.

I became the first in my family to successfully complete University by earning a Licence in Anglophone studies from the Université de Rouen. Immediately after, I joined the University of Edinburgh as a French Language Assistant for one academic year (I was on a fixed-term contract), before moving to London to work as Project Manager for a market research firm, a position I quit after less than a year to move back up to Edinburgh to pursue a Masters in Comparative Literature. Money being very important in the modern world, as soon as I handed in my dissertation I took up the first job that would have me, which was Course Secretary at the University of Edinburgh Business School. I then enrolled on a PhD in Comparative Literature (still working full-time on the side), under the supervision on Fabien Arribert-Narce and Marion Schmid, who became my colleagues when I joined the French section on a permanent basis in 2022 after one year as a PhD tutor.

I was awarded my PhD without corrections in July 2025.

Qualifications

  • 2015 - Licence ès Lettres Anglais, Université de Rouen
  • 2018 - Master of Science in Comparative Literature, University of Edinburgh
  • 2025 - PhD in Comparative Literature, University of Edinburgh
    • Title: Beyond Japonisme: Ethics and Aesthetics of Intermedial Japan in Roland Barthes, Michel Butor and Dany Laferrière
    • Supervisors: Dr Fabien Arribert-Narce & Prof Marion Schmid
    • Examiners: Dr Sarah Tribout-Joseph (Edinburgh), Prof Charles Forsdick (Cambridge), Prof Akane Kawakami (Birkbeck)

Undergraduate teaching

  • Year 1
    • French 1A Language
    • French 1B Oral
    • French 1B Literature & Civilisation
  • Year 2
    • French 2 Oral
    • French 2 Language
    • French 2 Literature
  • Year 3 & 4
    • French Hons. Language Paper 1
    • Comparative Literature in a European and Global Perspective

Open to PhD supervision enquiries?

No

Research summary

  • Francophone literature and visual culture
  • Intermediality
  • Comparative literature
  • World literature and transnationalism
  • Translingualism
  • Ethical criticism (Emmanuel Levinas)
  • Encounters between Japan and the Francophone world
  • The work of Michel Butor and Dany Laferrière

Current research interests

In addition to the above research interests, I am also involved with scholarship of teaching and learning (SOTL) in Francophone Studies. This includes engaging with pedagogical scholarship to inform my teaching (i.e. reading about teaching) and writing about teaching, learning and assessment in different formats.

Past research interests

My doctoral research focussed on three French-Speaking writers (Roland Barthes, Michel Butor and Dany Laferrière) and the intermedial aspects of their works on Japan. I examined how these authors engage with Japanese artistic forms (literature, visual arts and theatre) to create their own works, and how this process affects the creation or negation of a possible Japanese "essence", understood in relation to a traditionally reductive or stereotypical japoniste treatment of Japan as a mere aesthetic theme.

Affiliated research centres

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