🗓️When: Friday 17 April 2026, 3–4pm
📍Where: 407 Babel Building, The University of Melbourne – Parkville Campus
“Decolonising, diversifying and decentring the study of European languages and cultures at Monash University and beyond”
In this seminar, we present our collective work aimed at decolonising, diversifying, and decentring the study of European languages and cultures at Monash University. Charlotte Mackay will outline the programme- and school-level working groups currently engaged in this process and reflect on the challenges such initiatives raise at the programme, Faculty, and institutional levels. Felicity Chaplin will discuss her pedagogical work, with particular attention to efforts to diversify the cultural content of two units: a core language unit and an overseas study tour. Frances Egan will also discuss curriculum redesign in two units: one in global studies and the other an undergraduate translation unit that brings together several language streams.
The seminar is conceived as an open forum in which attendees can share, discuss, and critically reflect on practical approaches to decolonising, diversifying and decentring curricula. Our aim is to encourage attendees to consider possible adjustments to their own teaching and research practices, while also recognising the significant potential that such initiatives hold for both educators and students. We are particularly interested in fostering future collaborations among Melbourne-based universities in order to further advance our respective efforts to decolonise, decentre, and diversify language and cultural studies.
Dr Felicity Chaplin is Lecturer in European Languages (French and Francophone Studies) at Monash University. She is the author of Charlotte Gainsbourg: Transnational and Transmedia Stardom (Manchester UP 2020) and La Parisienne in cinema (Manchester UP 2017) and a contributor to Refocus: The Films of François Ozon (Edinburgh UP 2021) and Remembering Paris in Text and Film (Intellect 2021). Her work appears in Australian Journal of French Studies, Celebrity Studies, French Screen Studies, and Screening the Past. She is currently writing a monograph on actor-writer-director Julie Delpy for Manchester UP and a book chapter on Alice Rohrwacher for Refocus: The Films of Agnès Varda (Edinburgh UP).
Dr Frances Egan is a Lecturer in Intercultural Studies in the School of Language, Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics at Monash University. Her research interests centre on transnational and intersectional feminisms in francophone literary and media spheres, as well as feminist and critical pedagogies. Frances is also a practicing translator; her English translation of Colette’s La vagabonde was published by OUP in 2025.
Dr Charlotte Mackay teaches French and Francophone language, literatures, cultures, and translation at Monash University. Her research focuses on French-language Sub-Saharan literature, particularly that of women writers from Central and West Africa. She is head of the Decolonial Working Group within European Languages and the School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics at Monash University.