Charles Forsdick

Biography

Charles Forsdick is Drapers Professorship of French and a Professorial Fellow at Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge. He was previously James Barrow Professor of French at the University of Liverpool (2001-23). Charles is a specialist on travel writing and postcolonial literature. He has also published widely on French colonial history and memory, and questions of penal heritage. He has collaborated on research projects with a number of external partners, including the British Library, the International Slavery Museum and Unilever. Charles is editor or co-editor of four book series, Contemporary French and Francophone Cultures, the Glissant Translation Project and World Writing in French: New Archipelagoes (all with Liverpool University Press), and Anthem Studies in Travel.

From 2012-20, Charles was Arts and Humanities Research Council Theme Leadership Fellow for Translating Cultures, overseeing a portfolio of around 120 projects on translation, interpreting and multilingualism. Former chair of the REF2021 Modern Languages and Linguistics subpanel, he is currently British Academy Lead Fellow for Languages. A Member of the Academy of Europe since 2011, Charles is Honorary Professor in the Centre for the Study of International Slavery at the University of Liverpool and Adjunct Professor in Translation Studies, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University.