Dr Karima Gaci

Profile

I am a specialist in the history of French language teaching in England, with a particular focus on the historiography of French grammar and its didactisation for Anglophone learners during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. My research sits at the intersection of the history of education, didactics of languages and cultures, and grammatological analysis.

My doctoral thesis (Paris 3 – Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2023, supervised by Professor Jean-Louis Chiss and available in open access) offers the first systematic archival investigation into the teaching of the French verb in grammars published in England between 1750 and 1880. Drawing on a corpus of 26 works held at the British Library, it establishes an original link between archives, the didactics of grammar, and the history of French as a foreign language in England.

My current research extends this investigation beyond 1880, examining the impact of British educational legislation on the grammatical tradition of French as a foreign language. I am also developing, for the first time to my knowledge, a theoretical framework applying historical re-enactment to the reconstitution of past pedagogical practices in FFL didactics — a project bridging the history of language teaching and contemporary classroom practice.

I welcome enquiries from prospective postgraduate students wishing to pursue research in the following areas: the history of French language teaching and learning; didactics of grammar; grammatological and archival approaches to language education; and the historiography of French as a foreign language, particularly in the British context.

Responsibilities

• LCS Health and Wellbeing Champion

Research interests

• History of French language teaching in England (18th–20th centuries)
• Historiography of French grammar and its didactisation for Anglophone learners
• Archival and archaeological approaches to the history of FFL education
• Historical re-enactment as a methodological framework in language didactics
• Teaching of French grammar to English-speaking learners
• Grammatology and pedagogical contextualisation

Qualifications

• BA (Lille 3)
• MA (Lille 3)
• PGCLTHE Leeds University
• MA (Paris 3- Sorbonne Nouvelle)
• PhD (Paris 3- Sorbonne Nouvelle)

Professional memberships

• Royal Historical Society
• International Federation of Teachers of French (FIPF)
• FHEA (Fellow of the Higher Education Academy)
• British Association for Applied Linguistics/Association Internationale de Linguistique Appliquée
• SHARP (Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing)
• International network GreC (Grammaire et Contextualisation)
• HoLLT.net (Research network for the History of Language Learning and Teaching)
• SIHFLES (Société Internationale pour l'Histoire du Français Langue Étrangère ou Seconde)
• Associate researcher DILTEC research unit (Sorbonne Nouvelle)
• French Studies Library Group

Student education

• Teaching of French language (post A-Level, ab initio degree programme, LANG module B2/C1)
• Teachers’ traning: Languages in Action: from Theory to Practice (MODL2090/MODL3130)

Research groups and institutes

• French