Professor Nicholas White

Nick is an Official Fellow and Director of Studies in French. At the University's Department of French, he is Professor of Nineteenth–Century French Literature and Culture.

Biography

Having grown up in the north of England and completed his undergraduate degree (French and German) and PhD in Cambridge, Nick took up a Faculty post in London University in 1993. In 2002 he returned to Cambridge, at which point he became a Fellow of Emmanuel. During his time as a Fellow, he has been an Admissions Tutor, Director of Studies in French and Modern Languages, and one of our Tutors. His main role in the University is to organise its teaching and research on nineteenth–century France, and in 2018, he was made Professor of Nineteenth–Century French Literature and Culture. In his time at the University, he has held many roles: Chair of the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages, Director of the Master's in European Literature, and as a 'Syndic', advising on the strategic direction of the University Library and Cambridge Assessment. And although he has spent longer in Cambridge than anywhere else, his sporting affiliations (in football and cricket) remain resolutely northern.

Teaching

Nick teaches all Emmanuel undergraduates who come to study French. His passion for French is motivated by an understanding that English alone offers too narrow a worldview. He supervises the French Literature course for all first year students, and in second and fourth years, he teaches students across the University on the Nineteenth–Century. He has supervised the PhDs of a generation of new nineteenth–century scholars: Andrew Counter (Oxford), Claire White (Girton), Edmund Birch (Churchill) and Rebecca Sugden (Caius). 

Research

His research focuses on classic nineteenth–century French novelists such as Zola and Maupassant. He is particularly interested in fiction about the Franco–Prussian War of 1870–71, which is the subject of his next book and a dozen articles (e.g. ‘The Fog of War: Impressionism and and Zola Revisited', 2016). His interest in friendship and the family has produced books on The Family in Crisis in Late Nineteenth–Century French Fiction and French Divorce Fiction from the Revolution to the First World War. In addition to over 50 journal articles and book chapters, nearly 100 talks and presentations, and reviews of more than 100 books, he has authored or edited 11 book–length publications (most recently Lendemains de défaite, Lyon, 2024).