News and Events

Leslie Barnes keynotes French Studies conferences in Australia and Thailand

In December 2025 and July 2026, Leslie Barnes delivered keynote addresses for the Australian Society for French Studies [“French Studies Matters”] and for the Colloque international sur les études françaises [“Etudes françaises pour un avenir durable”]. Leslie’s presentations were drawn from her recent book, Sex Work in Southeast Asia: Scenes of Ambivalence in Literature and…

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Maika Nguyen joins the CEFRES and Charles University

In January 2026, Maika Nguyen joined the Centre français de recherches en sciences sociales (CEFRES) and Charles University (UK) as a postdoctoral researcher. During her two-year position, she will be working on an analysis of contemporary Vietnamese diasporic literature and film in English, Czech, French and German. Her project, entitled ‘”Vietnamese” Across “Europe”: Displacement, Identity…

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New publication by Leslie Barnes: Sex Work in Southeast Asia: Scenes of Ambivalence in Literature and Film

Sex Work in Southeast Asia (Edinburgh UP, 2025) examines the ambivalences that mark Southeast Asian sex industries under twenty-first-century global imperialism, exploring the multi-layered subjectivities of sex workers, procurers and clients, and interrogating the frameworks in which discourses surrounding sex work circulate.  Engaged with debates concerning the status of transactional sex, it explores the symbolic force and concrete conditions of sex work in Cambodia and Vietnam,…

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