Staff profile

I come from Liège, in the French speaking part of Belgium. As an undergraduate, I studied Romance languages and literature at the University of Liège. I spent one semester as an Erasmus student in Padua (Università degli Studi di Padova). I studied for a M.A. in French literature at the University of Liège, with a special focus on the nineteenth-century. Following this, I completed a teacher training degree at the same university and taught French in a Belgian secondary school for a year.

In 2011, I undertook a Ph.D. in French studies at Bangor University whilst working as a graduate teaching assistant. My research focused on the representation of a masculine malaise, sexual and gender ambiguities in narratives of the July Monarchy (1830-48) and scientific texts of that time.

In 2015, I started to work at the Centre for Foreign Language Study at Durham University as an Assistant Teaching Fellow in French. I have been teaching a variety of levels and students since then.

I have been a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy since 2015 and a certified DELF-DALF examiner since 2017.

In 2019, I have launched the project Ballet workshops in French, which has been funded by the first DCAD collaborative grant.

With French colleagues from the CFLS and MLAC, I have created the pedagogical toolbox Pratiques créatives de l'enseignement du français à l'université on the online platform IFProfs. We have also organised online creative writing workshops and masterclasses for learners and teachers of French, and launched creative writing contests in French.

• Relations between science and literature
• Language learning and dancing
• Creative writing in language learning
• Gender identities
• Language teaching and literature
• Teaching heterogeneous groups

Authored book

• (2022). The Hermaphrodite, the Effete and the Butch: Sexual and Gender Ambiguities in Nineteenth-Century French Narratives. Peter Lang.

Chapter in book

• Crahay, Géraldine (2020). French creative theatre in a course for beginners: The case of Finissez vos phrases! by Jean Tardieu. In Literature in Language Learning: New Approaches. Almeida, Ana Bela Bavendiek, Ulrike & Biasini, Rosalba Research-publishing.net. 77-84.
• Crahay, Géraldine (2018). ‘“Voyez les femmes les plus hommasses, ces viragines audacieuses” La domestication de la femme masculine dans les traités savants de la première moitié du dix-neuvième siècle’. In Medicine and Maladies: Representing Affliction in Nineteenth-Century France. Leroy, Sophie (ed.) Brill-Rodopi. 19-40.

Journal Article

• (2017). ‘Serenity’s Operative and Les Misérables’s Inspector Javert: The Masculinity of Scrupulous Civil Servants’. Slayage: The Journal of the Whedon Studies Association 15(1).
• (2017). Théophile Gautier: Mademoiselle de Maupin. The Literary Encyclopedia
• (2017). Victor Hugo: Han d'Islande [Han of Iceland]. The Literary Encyclopedia
• (2016). ‘“Oh! non, je ne pourrai jamais te le dire… j’aime un homme!” Hermaphrodite et l’esthétisation de l’homosexualité dans Mademoiselle de Maupin'. Nineteenth-Century French Studies 45(1-2): 17-32.
• (2013). ‘Valorising Genitalia: Homosexuality and Hermaphroditism in French Scientific Writings in the Nineteenth Century. Harts & Minds 1(2).