I am a freelance academic translator (French to English) and editor, and a researcher in French literature. My research focuses on autobiographical writing, and especially diaries, in French in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. I also have a wide experience of teaching French literature, literary theory, and translation at university level. I completed a doctorate at the University of Oxford in 2014 and was a Junior Research Fellow at Christ Church, Oxford, from 2014 to 2018.
My monograph Diaries Real and Fictional in Twentieth-Century French Writing was published in 2018 by Oxford University Press (link). This work explores varied forms and practices of diary writing through the work of André Gide, Jean-Paul Sartre, Raymond Queneau, Roland Barthes, and Annie Ernaux. I have also co-edited a special issue of Nottingham French Studies on ‘Diaristic Writing and the Idea of Literature in French and Francophone Writing, 1940–2020’, published in 2022 (link). See my list of publications for more details.
My translation and editing work is mostly related to academic writing in disciplines within the humanities and social sciences. My published translations include texts by writers such as Pierre Bourdieu, Jean-Luc Nancy (in collaboration with Cadenza Academic Translations), and Bruno Latour. I have helped authors to publish a large number of articles and books in English, in a wide range of subject areas. In January 2020 I co-founded Rue Serpente Academic Translation with Dr Jon Templeman.
This website contains a list of my academic publications and a selection of translations, details of my teaching experience, some blog posts, and the text of four lectures on André Gide, which I originally delivered at the Oxford University Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages.
Dr Sam Ferguson: Academic Translator and Researcher in French literature 