Event Details

The Ruskin & Department of English Literature & Creative Writing present an open seminar with Dr Delphine Grass, Prof. Nick Dunn and Prof. Benoît Peeters.

The seminar is open to all, with no need to book.

Delphine Grass is a Lecturer in French at Lancaster University. Her research focuses primarily on modern and contemporary French literature, theory and criticism. In among that, Dr Grass is particularly interested in creative critical practices, or forms of art writing, around translation, as well as in translation as a creative writing and art practice in itself. Another aspect of her research into contemporary writing practices focuses on the relationship between literature, art and politcs. She has written and published works on translation, writing technologies, posthumanism and the archive. Dr Grass has also written several articles on Michel Houellebecq and is the translator, with Tim Mathews, of his poetry collection The Art of Struggle. Her new research project, funded by the AHRC/MEITS, is entitled 'Translation as Creative Critical Practice'. It researches the ways in which translation can stimulate creative approaches to the reading and interepretation of texts. Dr Grass is also a practicing poet and has published works in both French and English.

Nick Dunn is Executive Director of ImaginationLancaster where he is also Professor of Urban Design. He is Associate Director of the Institute for Social Futures, where he also leads research in the Future of Cities and Urbanism. His work responds to the contemporary city as a series of systems, flows and processes, and is explored through experimentation and discourse addressing the nature of urban space: its perception, demarcation and appropriation. His work for the UK Government Office for Science and projects such as the EPSRC-funded Liveable Cities contributes to the wider discourse surrounding the current characteristics and potential future scenarios of the urban landscape in a range of contexts. In particular, he is interested in why and how (maybe even where and when) we design, rather than what we design. He has published numerous books related to architecture and urbanism and his papers have been published and presented internationally and collaborative creative work exhibited across the UK, China and the Ukraine.

After a degree in Philosophy at the Sorbonne (Paris I), Professor Benoit Peeters undertook his Masters at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS‚ Paris, 1980) under the direction of Roland Barthes. He holds a « HDR-Habilitation à diriger les recherches » (Paris I-Sorbonne, 2007).

Professor Peeters is a novelist, graphic novelist, intellectual biographer, cultural historian and screen-writer. He published his first novel, Omnibus, in 1976 (Les éditions de Minuit), followed by his second, La Bibliothèque de Villers, 1980. An expert on Hergé, he has published both Tintin and the World of Hergé (Methuen) and Hergé‚ Son of Tintin (Johns Hopkins University Press). He also wrote the official biography of Jacques Derrida (2010). The book has been translated into English (Polity Press) and eight other languages.

A long association with the artist François Schuiten has led to the series of graphic novels called ‘The Obscure Cities’ (see http://www.altaplana.be). Sixteen volumes have appeared so far, with great success; they have won numerous prizes and have been translated into more than twelve languages. The Leaning Girl was recently published in the US by Alaxis Press. The Theory of the Grain of Sand will be published in December 2016 by IDW.An enthusiast of narratives in all their forms, Benoît Peeters has also collaborated with the graphic artist Frédéric Boilet, the photographer Marie-Françoise Plissart, the musician Bruno Letort‚ the filmmakers Raoul Ruiz and Jaco Van Dormael. His interest in cinema has increased over the years. He is the author of three short films as well as several documentaries. He directed one feature film‚ The Last Shot.