Professor Andy Stafford
- Position: Professor of French and Critical Theory
- Areas of expertise: Critical theory, especially the work of Roland Barthes; the photo-text; African and Caribbean literature, politics and historiography; the essay and other short forms.
- Email: A.J.Stafford@leeds.ac.uk
- Phone: +44(0)113 343 3498
- Location: 1.20 Michael Sadler
Profile
BA, MA, PhD (Nottingham), HDR (Grenoble), member of French Studies at Leeds since 2003.
Honorary positions and awards
- Professeur invité at the Université de Paris-XIII (2019–2020).
- ‘Habilitation a diriger des recherches’ (HDR), Université de Grenoble, 2011.
- Editorial board member of Barthes Studies and of Revue Roland Barthes.
- Member of the ‘Equipe Barthes’, at the Institut des textes et manuscrits (ITEM), in the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) in Paris.
- Member of the Editorial Board for Edinburgh Critical Studies in World Literature and Intermediality
Book publications
- Roland Barthes Writing the Political: History, Dialectics, Self (Anthem Press 2023).
- Current book project: a monograph called Photo-texts From Below. Collectivist Dispatches from the 21st-Century French Margins, which looks at collectivism in photography alongside texts in French since the Millennium; appearing in Legenda Press’s ‘Visual Cultures’ series in 2025.
Recent journal and article publications
- ‘Pic, Théâtre, Légende : aux origines du photo-textualisme barthésien’, Revue Roland Barthes 6 (July 2023), Magali Nachtergael and Rodrigo Fontanari eds.
- ‘D’un confinement à un autre : comment représenter Roland Barthes au sanatorium 1942-1945 ?’ [Portuguese translation] in Márcio Venício Barbosa, François Weigel and Josilene Pinheiro-Mariz eds, Literatura e Doença (Campina Grande: editora de UFCG, Brazil, 2023)
- ‘Dead Time: The “Collectivist” Photobook in the Prison Work of Mohammed Bourouissa’, in Paul Edwards ed. The Photobook World: Artists’ Books and Forgotten Social Objects (Manchester UP 2023).
- ‘“Writing is an act, the poem a weapon, and discussion an assembly”. The Political Turn in Souffles during Morocco’s 1968,’ Forum for Modern Language Studies 59:3 (September 2023), special number on ‘Reviewing 1968: the wider lenses of the Cultural Review’, ed. Emma Wagstaff.
- ‘Undialectics: Marx and Hegel thinking through Roland Barthes’, French Forum 49:1 (December 2024).
- 'Petite mythologie du « mwa ». Roland Barthes, le non-barthésien’, in W. Shawn Temple ed, Connivences et Convergences avec Ralph Heyndels, Caen: Editions Traverse(s), 2024.
- 35 entries in the Dictionnaire Barthes, ed. Claude Coste, Paris: Honoré-Champion, 2024.
New research projects in preparation
- Global Barthes in World Literature – project supported by the British Academy.
- Conference in Paris on Aziz Chouaki in JUne 2026, co-organised with Ridha Boulaabi, Sylvie Brodziak, Yasmine Chouaki,.Corinne Francois-Deneve.
Research interests
I am a Critical Theorist, specialising in the work of Roland Barthes. For my latest book on Barthes, I have written a blog: ‘A Sensitive, Avid and Silent Political Subject’: Roland Barthes, Politics-Polemics-Pandemics – Anthem Press Blog.
I am currently working on the photo-textual work of prize-winning Algerian-French artist, Mohamed Bourouissa, in particular his 2005–2008 banlieue project Périphérique and on his extraordinary photobook on French prison life, made with his friend Al, Temps Mort.
I am looking at how language (of all sorts) is used to inflect and politically commit the striking range of images. The book that I am writing then looks at ‘people on the move’ (illegal migrants and refugees) in the photo-textual work of Aziz Chouaki, Mathieu Pernot; at First World War resistance in the stunning work of Chloe Dewe Mathews, Shot at Dawn/Fusillés pour l’exemple in which she photographs in 2014 places in France where deserters were summarily shot; at Algerian memories of independence in the recent collaboration between writer Kamel Daoud and photographer Raymond Depardon. Other chapters will be on Indian photographer Bishan Samaddar’s ‘remediation’ of Barthes’s sexually-controversial notes Incidents, and, I am hoping, on the care sector during the pandemic and in relation to ageing.
<h4>Research projects</h4> <p>Any research projects I'm currently working on will be listed below. Our list of all <a href="https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/dir/research-projects">research projects</a> allows you to view and search the full list of projects in the faculty.</p>Research groups and institutes
- Digital cultures
- French
- Literary studies
- Politics
- Centre for World Literatures