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Russian Studies staff

Untitled Document

Fionnùala E. Sinclair

Lecturer in Medieval Studies (French & Italian)

French

Finn.Sinclair@ed.ac.uk

+44 (0)131 650 8423

59 George Square, Room A.3

Outline Biography

A graduate of the University of Hull (B.A.) and the University of Edinburgh (Ph.D.), Fionnùala (Finn) Sinclair taught at the University of Cambridge and the University of Nottingham and was Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Hawai’i before being appointed Research Associate on the AHRC-funded project ‘Poetic Knowledge in Late Medieval France’ (2005–2009). The project was a collaboration between the University of Manchester and the University of Cambridge, and Fionnùala’s appointment was divided between the two universities. From 2009 she was Associate Lecturer in the Department of French at the University of Cambridge and Tutor and Director of Studies at Girton College. Fionnùala was appointed to the post of Lecturer in Medieval Studies at the University of Edinburgh in January 2012.

Research Interests

Fionnùala Sinclair’s research initially focused on French and Occitan literature of the 12th and 13th centuries, and resulted in the publication of Milk and Blood: Gender and Genealogy in the ‘Chanson de Geste’ (2003), along with several articles. The monograph examines the medieval perception of maternity and the significance of the mother’s role in epic narrative, and is informed by modern gender and feminist theory, drawing in particular on the work of Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray.

More recently, Fionnùala’s research has concentrated on the later medieval period, with a particular focus on the inter-relation of history and fiction in literature written in French during the 14th and early 15th centuries. She is currently working on a monograph, Imagining History: Memory, Myth and Identity in Late Medieval French Texts, which studies how the interplay between poetic and historiographic writing shapes notions of authorial, genealogical and national identity in the late Middle Ages.

Fionnùala Sinclair is co-editor, with Rebecca Dixon, of Poetry, Knowledge and Community in Late Medieval France (2008) and contributor to Knowing Poetry: Verse in Medieval France from the Rose to the Rhétoriqueurs, by Adrian Armstrong and Sarah Kay (2011).

Postgraduate research proposals are welcome on medieval French, Occitan and Italian literature and culture, and the inter-relation between these. Fionnùala has a particular interest in inter-disciplinary research projects, and in those that draw on modern critical theory and philosophy.

Publications

Publications list for Fionnùala E. Sinclair

This article was published on Oct 30, 2012