Benedicte Andre

Dr Bénédicte André is Associate Dean, Students and Learning in the Faculty of Arts and a Senior Lecturer in French and Francophone Studies. In her senior leadership role, she works across governance, curriculum and student engagement to improve the systems and structures that shape the student experience. Her work focuses on improving the coherence and fairness of academic systems, and designing processes that help students navigate university life with greater clarity, confidence and agency, with a focus on supporting meaningful and self-defined pathways through university, not just standardised measures of success.

While her portfolio is primarily focused on academic strategy, Dr André continues to teach in French and Francophone Studies to maintain a direct connection with students and the learning environments she helps shape. Her academic practice is informed by literary and philosophical traditions that explore complexity, relation and lived experience, insights that inform both her approach to curriculum and assessment design and her work in building student-facing systems that are clear, ethical and responsive.

Across both roles, she is committed to creating spaces where students can reflect, connect ideas with lived experience and emerging career aspirations, and develop confidence in unfamiliar or uncertain territory. Mentoring is a central part of her practice, both in the classroom and through her leadership, where she works to amplify student voice and support students in finding their own direction.

• Comparative Island Francophonies
• Contemporary literature in French
• Islands, oceans and archipelagos
• Border crossing, mobility and liminality
• Literary and visual cultures
• Postcolonial Studies

Past supervisions include:

“Leila Alaoui’s Les Marocains (2010-2014) as Photographie Engagée: Exploring the Place of the Other in the Contemporary French Cultural Imagination”.

• Keywords: Ideological construction of Otherness; contemporary French cultural imagination; established modes of representation; gallery space; photography.

« La Fragmentation de l’identité québécoise dans À toi, pour toujours, ta Marie-Lou (1971) de Michel Tremblay ».

• Keywords: Representations and negotiations of memory, history and identity; Québécois theatre.

Dr André currently convenes:

• FREN3010/2210 – French Studies 5
• FREN3020/2220 – French Studies 6

Teaching and curriculum development includes:

• FREN1010 - French Studies 1
• FREN1020 - French Studies 2
• FREN1210/FREN2010 - French Studies 3
• FREN1220/FREN2020 - French Studies 4
• FREN2210/FREN3010 - French Studies 5
• FREN2220/3020 - French Studies 6
• FREN1310/3210 - French Studies 7
• FREN3073 - Topics in French Cultures
• INTS1000 - Language and Communication: Cultural Contexts
• INTS3030 - Visualising Cultures
• INTS7000 - Critique in Language, Literature and Culture Studies