Françoise Coste

Professor Françoise Coste is a faculty member at the University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès, affiliated with the Center for Anglophone Studies (CAS), where she conducts research and teaching in American Civilization. She has held the rank of Professor since 2017 and previously served as a Lecturer from 2005 to 2017 at the same institution.

• English Aggregation, 1999
• ENS Fontenay-Saint-Cloud, 1996
• Doctorate (2004), University of Bordeaux III – Michel de Montaigne
• Habilitation to Supervise Research (2016), Université Lumière-Lyon 2

Her research focuses on American politics, conservatism, the Republican Party, the US presidency, Ronald Reagan, and women's rights. She explores the intellectual and cultural dimensions of American conservatism, tracing its evolution from Reagan to Trump and analyzing key political moments such as the 1976 Bicentennial and 1979 as turning points. Her work bridges political history, cultural studies, and contemporary political analysis.

Her recent publications demonstrate a strong thematic continuity in examining conservatism, populism, and presidential leadership. Articles like “Trump ou l’apocalypse” and “O populismo conservador” analyze the ideological roots and transformations of American conservatism, while works on Reagan and the Ford Administration reflect her deep engagement with presidential biographies and historical turning points. Her scholarship also addresses civic education, ethnic voting, and migration policies through doctoral supervision and collaborative research.

• Co-responsible for Axis 3 of the CAS
• President of the CSQ of the 11th section at UT2J
• Elected member of the Scientific Council of the Institute of the Americas
• Member of the editorial board of Caliban magazine

She has supervised multiple PhD theses on civic education, social policies, political clientelism, and migration detention, and has guided an HDR on public policy. She participates in national collaborative projects including the RESET project (2020–2025) on transnational intellectual networks and serves as hub manager for the ANR AMERICA 2026 project launched in 2024. She contributes to public scholarship as a historical consultant for the Arte documentary “Reagan, a hell of a president” and as a contributor to the podcast “Losers: A History of the American Elections.”

Her work is centered at the CAS laboratory within the ALLPH@ Doctoral School, where she leads and collaborates on interdisciplinary research on Anglophone societies.