Dr Albertine Fox

Supported by a Faculty Research Fellowship in 2023, this research builds on previous collaborative projects and publications, including an extended conversation, in French and English, with the documentary filmmaker Katy Léna Ndiaye, accompanied by the essay 'Collaborative Listening, Collaborative Pedagogy' in Screen Worlds: Decolonising Film and Screen Studies, and an interview and collaboration with the Lebanese filmmaker Corine Shawi in Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies.

My most recent work includes a chapter in a major new academic volume, co-edited by Mary Harrod and Ginette Vincendeau (Bloomsbury, 2026), on the director and artist Agnès Varda. My chapter addresses Varda's landmark film Sans toit ni loi (Vagabond, 1985), centred on the female protagonist's noisy sonic agency that shakes up a system from within. Prior to this, in 2024, I published a comparative study in Screen on lesbian representation and listening in contemporary Lebanese cinema. My earlier publications focus on the cinema and multmedia work of the Belgian director Chantal Akerman, including her musical collaboration with the cellist Sonia Wieder-Atherton (MIRAJ, French Screen Studies, and Paragraph). 

Past research awards 

In 2014, I received the Susan Hayward Prize by the Association for Studies in French Cinema, and in 2012 I was awarded the R.H. Gapper Postgraduate Essay Prize by the Society for French Studies for an essay on Godard's 1979 feature Sauve qui peut (la vie). Prior to this, in 2007, my undergraduate essay on three novels by Marguerite Duras was awarded a Joint runner-up prize in the R.H. Gapper Undergraduate Essay competition, run by the Society for French Studies. This was published in 2008 as the short article 'Writing the Rhythms of Desire: Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein, L’Amour and L’Amant' in French Studies Bulletin, A Quarterly Supplement.  

PhD and MA supervision

Alongside the undergraduate modules I convene on cinema and documentary, I co-supervise theory and practice-based PhD and MPhil theses on a range of subjects, including:

• Sound in Chantal Akerman's cinema
• Queer European and Sinophone art cinema
• Trans visuality and the politics of visibility
• Female disability and the senses in libertine literature
• The documentary practice of Trinh T. Minh-ha

I have also supervised MA dissertations on a broad range of topics: gender ambiguity and queer aesthetics in film and visual art; the ethics of Trinh T. Minh-ha's theory and film; female corporeal experiences in translations of Annie Ernaux’s autobiographical works.

Administrative roles

I have acted as Director of Teaching for the Department of French at Bristol, as well as Postgraduate Teaching Officer for Bristol's School of Modern Languages, and Interim Programme Director for the Faculty of Arts' MA Black Humanities (cover for a staff member on leave).

Background

Before joining Bristol, I completed my BA in French with Music at Royal Holloway, University of London, followed by an MA by Research on the role of sound and music in the cinema of Marguerite Duras. I later completed my PhD, also at Royal Holloway, on 'acoustic spectatorship' and the post-1979 film and video work of Jean-Luc Godard, before taking up a three-year postdoctoral Junior Research Fellowship at Churchill College, Cambridge. Educated at a state comprehensive school before pursuing higher education, I am a strong advocate for social mobility and widening participation in academia.