UG Post Offer Open Days

Offer holders will be invited to come and meet Academics and Professional Services staff from the School of European Languages, Culture and Society (SELCS) at a Post Offer Open Day.

Once you receive an offer from UCL to study at the School of European Languages, Culture and Society (SELCS), we will invite you to attend one of our Post Offer Open Day events. All events usually take place on a Wednesday afternoon during February and March.

The Post Offer Open Day is a chance for you to gain more insight into the programme you have applied for; to see a bit more of UCL, to meet some of our teaching staff and current students, and to ask any questions you may have. 

Deciding where to study is a big decision and it is important that you are confident in making your choices when it comes to ‘firming up’ on UCAS Track. We know you may be considering a number of options, so we recommend that you attend, even if you have visited UCL before.

More details, including dates and information on how to accept your invitation, will be e-mailed directly to our offer holders nearer the time.

Comparative Literature

Xiaofan Amy Li

Xiaofan Amy Li is Lecturer in Comparative Cultural Studies and she writes about French and Chinese literatures. She is particularly interested in literary exchanges between France and China/East Asia, ancient and modern cross-period comparisons, poetry, play and creativity, and translation.

To request a call, please e-mail xiaofan.amy.li@ucl.ac.uk and give your full name and the programme title you applied for.

Florian Mussgnug

Florian Mussgnug writes on Twentieth and Twenty-First Century literature in Italian, English and German, with a particular focus on literary theory and experimental writing. He is also interested in narratives of catastrophe and existential risk and in cultural representations of the climate emergency.

To request a call, please e-mail f.mussgnug@ucl.ac.uk and give your full name and the programme title you applied for.

Jennifer Rushworth

Jennifer Rushworth is a Lecturer in French and Comparative Literature and currently programme director for the BA in Comparative Literature at UCL. She has wide interests in mourning, medievalism, and music, always from a theoretical perspective.

To request a call, please e-mail j.rushworth@ucl.ac.uk and give your full name and the programme title you applied for.

Emily Baker

Emily Baker is a Lecturer in Comparative Literature and Latin American Studies. She is interested in how historical and contemporary events and phenomena are represented in literature and accounted for in political theory and philosophy. Topics include Nazism and the Second World War, Latin American dictatorships, the Cuban Revolution, Neoliberalism, and the Climate crisis.

Emily is usually available on Tuesdays between 2-4pm UK time. To request a call, please e-mail e.baker@ucl.ac.uk and give your full name and the programme title you applied for.

Catherine Keen

Catherine Keen's research explores the culture of medieval Italy, including writers such as Dante, Boccaccio, and Petrarch. She is especially interested in topics relating to medieval exiles, refugees, and travellers, and in translation and multilingualism. Her undergraduate teaching includes a module on Dante's Inferno for first-year students, as well as modules on modern and medieval poetry, and on medieval and renaissance books and manuscripts. Based in the Italian department, she also teaches on the Comparative Literature programme, where all students will meet her on the core second-year module on Imitation, Invention and Authorship.

To request a call, please e-mail c.keen@ucl.ac.uk and give your full name and the programme title you applied for.

Hélène Neveu Kringelbach

Hélène Neveu Kringelbach is an anthropologist who carries out regular fieldwork in Francophone West Africa (Senegal), and with Senegalese migrants in France and the UK. She has done research on dance and music in urban Senegal, and is currently focusing on transnational marriage, ‘mixed’ marriage and family relationships between Senegal and Europe. 
She has an interest in combining anthropological and literary approaches. At SELCS she teaches an interdisciplinary module on Music, Film and Media in Africa, and one on Anthropology and Literature (BA Comparative Literature).

To request a call, please e-mail h.neveu@ucl.ac.uk and give your full name and the programme title you applied for.

Jann Matlock

To request a call, please e-mail j.matlock@ucl.ac.uk and give your full name and the programme title you applied for.

Language with Film Studies

Claire Thomson

Dr Claire Thomson, Associate Professor of Scandinavian Film, teaches the first-year BA module ‘How to Read Film’ and in 2020-21 convenes the MA in Film Studies. While her teaching ranges widely across film and media history and theory, her research specialisms include documentary and public health film, cinema and national identity, and the cinemas of the Nordic region. Her books include A History of Danish Cinema (Edinburgh UP, 2021), Short Films from a Small Nation (Edinburgh UP, 2018), and Thomas Vinterberg’s Festen (University of Washington Press, 2013).

To book a video call with Dr Thomson, please make a booking on her calendar, remembering to specify your contact details for skype, facetime or zoom: https://clairethomson-ucl.youcanbook.me/

Dutch

Christine Sas

Christine Sas is Head of Dutch Studies and teaches Dutch language and translation as well as SELCS-wide courses on language and (socio-)linguistics. She has a particular interest in issues of language and ideology, and how they play out in language teaching . She is author of the Routledge Intensive Dutch course and the Routledge Intermediate Dutch reader.

To request a call, please e-mail c.sas@ucl.ac.uk and give your full name and the programme title you applied for. Christine's preferred method of contact is Skype.

French

James Agar

James Agar is currently Senior Lecturer in French and Comparative Literature. His research interests and teaching focus on European, particularly French, twentieth and twenty-first century literature, film, critical theory, modern French autobiographical writing, and socio-cultural discourses of HIV/AIDS. He has published numerous articles and book chapters on: AIDS in France; AIDS and constructions of masculinity; queer theory and French literature in an international context; the work of Foucault; Hervé Guibert’s writing; Cyril Collard’s film version of Les Nuits fauves; the cinema of Gaël Morel. He is currently working on issues arising from aspects of the English language translation of the first volume of Foucault’s History of Sexuality and preparing a book chapter on Patrice Chéreau’s film Intimacy.

To request a call, please e-mail j.agar@ucl.ac.uk and give your full name and the programme title you applied for.

Jennifer Rushworth

Jennifer Rushworth is a Lecturer in French and Comparative Literature and currently programme director for the BA in Comparative Literature at UCL. She has wide interests in mourning, medievalism, and music, always from a theoretical perspective.

To request a call, please e-mail j.rushworth@ucl.ac.uk and give your full name and the programme title you applied for.

Kevin Inston

To request a call, please e-mail k.inston@ucl.ac.uk and give your full name and the programme title you applied for.

Patrick Bray

Patrick Bray is Lecturer in French and has teaching interests in French 19th and 20th Century Literature, Comparative Literature, literary theory, and cinema. He is the author of two books on the 19th-century novel, and has edited volumes on the Louvre and on the work of philosopher Jacques Rancière. 

To request a call, please e-mail p.bray@ucl.ac.uk and give your full name and the programme title you applied for.

James Connolly

James Connolly is Lecturer in Modern French History and currently programme convenor for the MA in Language, Culture and History. His research interests include the social and cultural history of war, military occupations (especially occupier-occupied relations), local and national identity, the First World War, and modern French and European history more generally.  He has published extensively on the occupation of northern France in the First World War, both via articles and his 2018 book, The Experience of Occupation in the Nord: Living with the Enemy in First World War France.  He has also co-edited a book on European military occupations in the First and Second World Wars, and recently published a book chapter on British towns ‘adopting’ French towns after the First World War.  He is currently working on the French experience of the Allied occupation of the Rhineland in the inter-war period, aiming to consider the relations between occupied and occupied, German behaviours under occupation, and the role of violence.

To request a call, please e-mail james.connolly@ucl.ac.uk and give your full name and the programme title you applied for.

Azzedine Haddour

To request a call, please e-mail a.haddour@ucl.ac.uk and give your full name and the programme title you applied for.

German

Mererid Puw Davies

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Geraldine Horan

Dr Geraldine Horan is Senior Lecturer in German Language. She teaches modules on German linguistics, sociolinguistics and political linguistics, and her research focuses on political discourse (with a particular focus on feminism, anti-feminism and nationalism), taboo language (including cursing and swearing), and dialect and identity. 

To request a call, please e-mail g.horan@ucl.ac.uk and give your full name and the programme title you applied for.

Judith Beniston

Judith Beniston is Associate Professor in German. She teaches modules on modern German and Austrian literature, and on translation, as well as teaching drama to students of Comparative Literature at BA and MA. Her research focuses on Austrian literature, and especially on drama and theatre history, of the period 1890-1945, with occasional excursions into medical humanities and theatre translation.

To request a call, please e-mail j.beniston@ucl.ac.uk and give your full name and the programme title you applied for.

Seb Coxon

Sebastian Coxon is Reader in German at UCL. He joined the Department of German in 2000, having studied in Oxford and Cologne. His principal field of research is medieval German literature; his interests include laughter and comedy, historical narratology and beards.

To request a call, please e-mail s.coxon@ucl.ac.uk and give your full name and the programme title you applied for.

Jeff Bowersox

Jeff Bowersox is the Admissions Tutor for SELCS as well as a German historian. He researches and teaches on German history since the Middle Ages, with a focus on migration, race, colonialism, and popular culture in the nineteenth century. 

Jeff is usually available on weekdays between 1-3pm UK time. To request a call, please e-mail j.bowersox@ucl.ac.uk and give your full name and the programme title you applied for.

Italian

John Dickie

John Dickie is Professor of Italian Studies. In addition to the Italian language, his teaching embraces literature and cinema, and even opera and Italian cuisine. His special research interests are the mafia and Italian food.

To request a call, please e-mail j.dickie@ucl.ac.uk and give your full name and the programme title you applied for.

Catherine Keen

Catherine Keen's research explores the culture of medieval Italy, including writers such as Dante, Boccaccio, and Petrarch. She is especially interested in topics relating to medieval exiles, refugees, and travellers, and in translation and multilingualism. Her undergraduate teaching includes a module on Dante's Inferno for first-year students, as well as modules on modern and medieval poetry, and on medieval and renaissance books and manuscripts. Based in the Italian department, she also teaches on the Comparative Literature programme, where all students will meet her on the core second-year module on Imitation, Invention and Authorship.

To request a call, please e-mail c.keen@ucl.ac.uk and give your full name and the programme title you applied for.

Enrico Palandri

Click here to access Enrico's Wikipedia page.

To request a call, please e-mail e.palandri@ucl.ac.uk and give your full name and the programme title you applied for.

Lisa Sampson

Lisa Sampson is Associate Professor of Italian. Besides Italian language, she teaches topics connected to her research in Renaissance culture, history, art and literature, theatre, and politics, as well as women’s writing and history, and European theatre in translation. For first year undergraduate students she runs an introductory course to the Italian Renaissance, which explores Machiavelli, artists like Leonardo and Michelangelo, and the Medici dynasty of Florence. 

To request a call, please e-mail l.sampson@ucl.ac.uk and give your full name and the programme title you applied for.

Scandinavian Studies

Annika Lindskog

Annika Lindskog is Lecturer in Swedish, former Programme Director for Scandinavian Studies, and former Admissions Tutor for the School. She will be able to discuss questions about degree structures and options across all the Scandinavian programmes, as well as other aspects of studying at UCL. She can also discuss your future language learning with you, go over what to expect from the courses and teaching methods, and also help advice on which Scandinavian language to choose should you need it! She is also the co-editor of a recent volume about Nordic Cultures, written by colleagues in the department, which gives a good taste of the approach to teaching and studying the Nordic region that the department takes. If you are interested, then you can read the book for free here.

Please email for an appointment, giving the name of the degree you have applied for: a.lindskog@ucl.ac.uk. Meetings will be via zoom, unless you specify a preferred alternative.

Spanish, Portuguese & Latin American Studies

Emily Baker

Emily Baker is a Lecturer in Comparative Literature and Latin American Studies. She is interested in how historical and contemporary events and phenomena are represented in literature and accounted for in political theory and philosophy. Topics include Nazism and the Second World War, Latin American dictatorships, the Cuban Revolution, Neoliberalism, and the Climate crisis.

Emily is usually available on Tuesdays between 2-4pm UK time. To request a call, please e-mail e.baker@ucl.ac.uk and give your full name and the programme title you applied for.

Zoltan Biedermann

Zoltán Biedermann, Professor of Early Modern History, is a specialist in the Portuguese-speaking world. He has been involved in setting up the Portuguese and Brazilian Studies programme at UCL. He teaches courses on Portuguese literature, imperial and colonial history. Other teachings include courses on the power of maps and on literary cartography.

To request a call, please e-mail z.biedermann@ucl.ac.uk and give your full name and the programme title you applied for.

Zoltan will do his best to contact you back within 24 hours on workdays.

Deborah Martin

Dr Debbie Martin is an Associate Professor in the Department of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies. She specialises in Latin American film and culture, and teaches a second year course, 'Introduction to Latin American Cinema' as well as a final year course, 'Childhood in Latin American Cinema'. Debbie also convenes and teaches on the first year core course 'Introduction to Spanish and Latin American Studies', which all students of Spanish take at UCL.

To request a call, please e-mail deborah.martin@ucl.ac.uk and give your full name and the programme title you applied for. Debbie is available for post-offer calls up to and including Tuesday 4th August.

Alexander Samson

Alexander Samson is a Reader in Early Modern Studies at University College London. His research interests include the early colonial history of the Americas, Anglo-Spanish intercultural interactions and early modern English and Spanish drama. His book Mary and Philip: the Marriage of Tudor England and Habsburg Spain is out with Manchester University Press. He runs the Golden Age and Renaissance Research Seminar and is director of UCL’s Centre for Early Modern Exchanges and the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters. 

To request a call, please e-mail a.samson@ucl.ac.uk and give your full name and the programme title you applied for.