Alexandra (Alex) Kurmann is Senior Lecturer in French and Francophone Studies. She completed her PhD in Comparative French and German Literature at the University of Melbourne (2014) and a Masters in European Comparative Literature at the University of Kent at Canterbury, UK. She is a specialist in comparative diaspora and Francophone literatures. 

She is on the editorial board of the Edinburgh University Press monograph series, 'New Directions in Francophone Studies: Diversity, Decolonization and Queerness', and is a member of the 'Asie du Sud-Est Research Network' [ASERN]. 

Alex's research interests lie in the field of Comparative Literature, Narrative Studies and literary analysis. She has worked on Vietnamese diasporic writing from a global perspective, bringing into dialogue literatures from the English and French speaking worlds. Her current research concerns intersectional narratives at the juncture of queerness, diaspora and class. 

Research Output:

Alex's first monograph, Intertextual Weaving in the Work of Linda Lê: Imagining the Ideal Reader, was published in 2016. It is the first book in the English langauge to explore the work of the Vietnamese-French author, Linda Lê. It reveals and traces a 14 year intertextual relationship between Lê and her self-chosen precursor, the post-war Austrian poet-turned-writer, Ingeborg Bachmann. 

Alex has published widely on diasporic literature in the journals Comparative Literature, The Australian Journal of French Studies, The Women in German Yearbook, Esprit créateur and Poetics Today (forthcoming), as well as in edited collections published by Edinburgh University Press, Éditions Classiques Garnier, PORTAL: Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies, including contributions to the Routledge Handbook of the Vietnamese Diaspora.  

Alex has taught and convened across all levels of French Studies, and has designed and delivered French langauge, Francophone Literature and Comparative Literature units. She convenes and teaches French Studies 1 to 4 - Beginners to Intermediate French; and co-designed, convenes and teaches a 3000 level culture unit, Language, Literature, Translation: Intercultural Perspectives. She contributes lectures and seminars on French and Francophone culture, cinema and language to interdisicplinary units in Global Languages and Cultures in the School of International Studies.