Professor Jeremy Ahearne

Research interests

I work on modern French political, intellectual and cultural history, and also on issues raised by the contemporary world language system. I have developed through various publications a broad approach to the interface between national cultures and public policies in France, paying particular attention to issues of political secularism, education reform, the media, national memory, language, and international cultural projection. My more recent work has revolved around the study of scientific, political and cultural projections of French as a world language, funded by a 12-month Leverhulme Research Fellowship in 2024-25. This is the subject of a forthcoming monograph due to appear in 2027.

Teaching and supervision

In 2026-27 I am teaching the second-year module French Presidents and the Media, and the final-year French Translation module (FR3012).

Administrative Roles

I am currently Head of French in the School for Modern Languages and Cultures

I was from 2021 to 2024 Deputy Chair (overseeing Research & Impact) for the Faculty of Arts, and from 2019 to 2023 Director of Research for the SMLC. I have previously been head of French (2005-2008), and director of the Centre for Cultural and Media Policy Studies (on secondment, 2014-2017).

Recent Publications

• Contemporary Projections of French as a World Language, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2027 (forthcoming).
• 'Londres pour autrui: politiques culturelles d'une ville globale et déséquilibres nationaux (2008-2017)' in Françoise Taliano-des Garets and Laurent Martin (ed.), Les Capitales européennes et la culture depuis 1945: Berlin, Londres, Madrid, Paris (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2025), pp. 73-93.
• 'Language Policies and Questions of Cultural Diversity in England (2000-2018)' in Alexandre Couture-Gagnon (ed), The Impact of UNESCO on States' Cultural Policies: 2005 Convention on Diversity of Cultural Expressions, (Routledge 2024), pp. 77-98.
• 'World Lingua Franca Regimes and Real Freedoms', in O. Davis and C. Watkin (eds), New Interdisciplinary Perspectives On and Beyond Autonomy (Routledge, 2023), pp. 167-80.
• 'Emmanuel Macron and the Reprojection of the French Language', Modern and Contemporary France, 30/3, 2022, pp. 257-274, (awarded the journal’s prize for the best article it published in 2022) online open-access publication available here
• 'What good is a supercentral language? Justificatory repertoires for the projection of French, 1998-2018', European Journal of Language Policy, 14/1, 2022, pp. 67-87 (online open-access publication here).
• 'The Subject of Recognition in International Relations: Axel Honneth', in C. Davis and O. Davis (eds), Freedom and the Subject of Theory: Essays in Honour of Christina Howells, Oxford: Legenda, 2019, pp. 142-152.
• 'International Recognition Regimes and the Projection of France'Link opens in a new window, International Journal of Cultural Policy, 24/6, Nov 2018, pp. 696-709
• 'Cultural insecurity and its discursive crystallisation in contemporary France', Modern and Contemporary France, 25/3, 2017, pp. 265-80.
• 'Cultural policy through the prism of fiction (Michel Houellebecq)', International Journal of Cultural Policy, 23/1, Jan 2017, pp. 1-16.
• ‘Laïcité: a parallel French cultural policy (2002-2007)’, French Cultural Studies, 25(3/4), 2014
• Government through Culture and the Contemporary French Right (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).
• ‘Fields and fragments: Bourdieu, Pascal and the teachings of literature’, in Paragraph, 35/1 March 2012, pp. 97-114 (open access version here)
• ‘Designs on the popular: framings of general, universal and common culture in French educational policy’, in David Looseley (ed.), Policy and the Popular (London: Routledge, 2011) [also available in International Journal of Cultural Policy, 17/4, Sept 2011, pp. 421-437] [open access version here]
• 'Questions of Religion and Cultural Policy in France', International Journal of Cultural Policy, 17/2 (March 2011), pp. 153-169 [open access vs here]
• Intellectuals, Culture and Public Policy in France: Approaches from the Left, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press (available through University of Chicago Press in USA), 2010.
• 'Cultural Policy Implicit and Explicit: A Distinction and Some Uses', International Journal of Cultural Policy, 15/2, 2009, pp. 141-53 [open access version here]

For full list of publications, see here.

Qualifications

BA, DPhil (Oxford)