School of Modern Languages & Cultures

Dr Madeleine Chalmers

  • Lecturer in Liberal Arts (School of Modern Languages & Cultures)

Biography

With a background in French studies, my work sits at the intersection of intellectual history, theology, continental philosophy, and avant-garde culture. At Glasgow, I am the inaugural programme director of the MA in Liberal Arts. 

My research revives cultural products of the past to respond to twenty-first-century questions in science, technology, and epistemology. I explore how individuals in particular times and places forge material and conceptual tools with which to navigate the world, and the ethical demands they make of our contemporary moment. 

My first monograph, French Technological Thought and the Nonhuman Turn (Edinburgh University Press, 2024) explored how late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century French writers negotiated the imbrication of technology into human life, uncovering a hitherto unrecognized genealogy which wound from mysticism through surrealism and unorthodox cybernetics to our contemporary theorisations of technology. 

My current project, DIY Epistemologies: An Alternative Intellectual History of France unearths the intellectual tradition "beneath" French theory to reveal taproots of neurodivergence, esotericism, embodied experimentation, indigenous knowledge and creative bricolage. It asks how we can find space within epistemology for knowledge which is atypical, delegitimized or socially unsactioned but integral to the messy complexity of how individuals shape their lives. 

Before joining Glasgow in 2026, I completed undergraduate and postgraduate studies in French at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and held positions at Wadham College (Oxford), Durham University, and the University of Leicester. 

Research interests

  • modern and contemporary French literature and thought
  • historic avant-gardes
  • intersections between science, technology, and culture
  • French intellectual history
  • Catholic mysticism

Publications

List by: Type | Date

Jump to: 2024
Number of items: 1.

2024

Chalmers, Madeleine ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1148-9422 (2024) French Technological Thought and the Nonhuman Turn. Series: Crosscurrents. Edinburgh University Press: Edinburgh. ISBN 9781399539814

This list was generated on Fri Jan 30 20:59:08 2026 GMT.
Jump to: Books
Number of items: 1.

Books

Chalmers, Madeleine ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1148-9422 (2024) French Technological Thought and the Nonhuman Turn. Series: Crosscurrents. Edinburgh University Press: Edinburgh. ISBN 9781399539814

This list was generated on Fri Jan 30 20:59:08 2026 GMT.

Supervision

I would be delighted to hear from prospective graduate students who share my interests, in particular:

  • modern and contemporary French literature and thought
  • historic avant-gardes
  • intersections between science, technology, and culture

Additional information

I am the Assistant Editor of French Studies Bulletin and member of the executive committee of the Society for French Studies.

Selected awards

2025    Society for French Studies Malcolm Bowie Prize (runner-up)

2023    Durham University Discretionary Award for Excellent Contribution

2023   Paragraph Essay Prize: ‘Unconjugating Community with Fernand Deligny and Jean-Luc Nancy’

2018    Society for French Studies R. Gapper Postgraduate Essay Prize: ‘The Surreal Technics of André Breton and Gilbert Simondon’