Keynote speakers

Gilles Béhotéguy is an Associate Professor in French Literature at the University of Bordeaux-ESPE d’Aquitaine. He completed his Phd. thesis in 2008 under the supervision of Isabelle Nières-Chevrel. Entitled Livres, lectures et lecteurs dans le roman contemporain français pour la jeunesse (1980-2005), his thesis questions the relationship between adolescent novels and 'Literature',  books and reading. His research delves into fiction libraries and focuses on issues of literary genres and gender. From gay studies to game reading, from fantasy to dystopia, his work is characterized by its eclecticism. Béhotéguy has developed a comprehensive framework to analyse the influence of society on the culture that pervades adolescent novels.

Helen Wheatley is Associate Professor in Film and Television at the University of Warwick, UK. She researches television history and aesthetics and her new monograph Spectacular Television: Exploring Televisual Pleasure (IB Tauris) is published this June. She is also the author of Gothic Television (MUP, 2006) and the editor of Re-viewing Television History: Critical Issues in Television Historiography (IB Tauris, 2007) and the co-editor of Television for Women: New Directions (Routledge, 2016  - with Rachel Moseley and Helen Wood).  She recently co-directed the AHRC funded research project 'A History of Television for Women in Britain, 1947-89' and the HLF funded exhibition 'The Story of Children's Television from 1946-Now' (currently touring the UK until Dec 2018).