About
Michael Kelly is Emeritus Professor of French at the University of Southampton. He had a long and distinguished career in teaching and research, retiring from teaching in 2016. He has published extensively in French cultural studies, in language policy and in languages in war and conflict. He now balances research with other creative and leisure activities.
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Research
Research interests
- French cultural studies
- Language policy
- Languages in war and conflict
Current research
His most recent work includes publications in two main areas. In French cultural studies he has written articles on ‘Unity and ambiguity in French culture of the 1940s’, ‘The Long Twilight of French Marxism’, and ‘Are French and English secularist traditions that far apart?’. In language policy he edited a book on Languages after Brexit, and co-edited a Handbook of Languages and Conflict, in which he examined the role of languages in new forms of warfare, especially drones and cyberwarfare. He no longer supervises doctoral students and balances research with creative and leisure activities.
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Teaching
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Biography
Michael Kelly graduated in French Studies at the University of Warwick, where he completed his doctorate on the work and thought of the Catholic personalist philosopher Emmanual Mounier, who was the subject of his first book (Sheed and Ward, 1979). He lectured for 14 years at University College Dublin, during which time he published a book on Modern French Marxism (Blackwell, 1982), which has recently been published in a second expanded edition (Brill, 2025).
He was appointed to the Chair of French in Southampton in 1986, where he remained until his retirement in 2016. He taught many courses on French language, literature, politics, philosophy and popular culture, extending into the broader area of European cultural studies. He also supervised doctoral studies in these areas and in intercultural communication, discourse analysis and language policy.
He was active as an advocate for language learning and held office in several national and European organisations, including the UK University Council for Languages, of which he was founding Chair, and the European Language Council of which he was a founding member and served as Secretary for a number of years. He also edited the association’s journal, European Journal of Language Policy/ Revue européenne de politique linguistique. From 2000 he was Director of the UK Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies (LLAS), which was funded nationally to promote learning and teaching in its disciplinary area. This led to several major projects, including the Routes into Languages programme to encourage students to study languages, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds. He also led an influential project for the European Commission on language teacher education, European Profile for Language Teacher Education (2004). He received an OBE in 2014 for his services to higher education and European cooperation.
He was an early proponent of the cultural studies approach to understanding the cultures and societies of countries in Europe and internationally. The book he co-edited with Jill Forbes, French Cultural Studies: An Introduction (OUP, 1995) was a pioneering volume in this area. In 2008 he collaborated with Hilary Footitt on an AHRC-funded project on Languages at War, which examined the role of languages in the aftermath of the Second World War and the civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, which led to several published volumes, a book series with Palgrave, which still continues, and a Handbook on Languages and Conflict (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).
He was awarded the David Crystal Award by the Chartered Institute of Linguistics in 2024, and was invited to write a reflective essay on ‘My life with languages’
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