This page only lists the projects for which I have been principal investigator or co-investigator

International Research Network on Postcolonial Print Cultures (IRNPPC)

I coordinate the International Research Network on Postcolonial Print Cultures (funded by CNRS 2023-2027) which brings together scholars working in the fields of postcolonial studies and literatures, book and art history, print and material cultures, who are interested in the production, circulation, and consumption of print as an agent in social, cultural, and political life, and who look at the practices, institutions, and networks that have shaped writing, reading and publishing in colonial and postcolonial contexts.

The network aims at developing a comparative and transnational network between eight institutions (the CNRS, the University of Chicago, Newcastle University, University of the Witwatersrand, NYU and NYU Abu Dhabi, Jadavpur University and the Center for Studies in Social Sciences in Calcutta) to understand how genres, forms and actors long considered ‘footnotes of literary history’ (periodicals and newspapers, tv and radio broadcasts, pamphlets,
advertising material etc.) have in fact been instrumental to the development of literary cultures in the Global South, instrumental forces of postcolonial and decolonial struggles, and sites of North/South and South/South transnational exchanges.

More information on the network, and on our activities here : https://irn-postcolonial-print-cultures.org/

Writers and Free Expression (2017-21)

The Writers and Free Expression Project, funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) from 2017 to 2021 explored the role writers organisations, most significantly International PEN, play in defending free expression. The project considered the history of writers’ activism since 1921 and the current challenges writers face in defending free speech. It brought together scholars, writers and activists with particular expertise in three geo-political areas, the United Kingdom (Rachel Potter, University of East Anglia, PI), South Africa (Peter D. McDonald, University of Oxford, Co-I) and India (Laetitia Zecchini, CNRS, Co-I) to investigate these questions in their international dimensions.

One of the outcomes of the project was the book Pen International : An Illustrated History which was published in multiple languages in 2021.

More information on the project here : https://writersandfreeexpression.wordpress.com/