Manon Mathias

Dr. Manon Mathias is a Reader in French at the University of Glasgow's School of Modern Languages and Cultures (SMLC), where she serves as Co-Director of the Medical Humanities Research Centre and previously held the role of SMLC Assessment Officer (2021-2024). With a distinguished academic career spanning over a decade, she has established herself as a leading scholar in medical humanities and nineteenth-century French literature.

Her educational background includes:

• Undergraduate degree in French and German at the University of Oxford (Trinity College)
• Masters of Studies in European Literature at the University of Oxford
• D.Phil in 2011 on the novelist George Sand from the University of Oxford

Dr. Mathias's research focuses on the intersection of literature, medicine, and cultural history, with particular expertise in medical humanities, cultural history, nineteenth-century literature, and the gut-brain axis. Her work explores how digestive health, preventative medicine, and childbirth have been represented in literature and understood within historical medical contexts. She has pioneered research on the gut-mind connection in nineteenth-century French literature and medicine, examining links between digestive health and mental wellbeing in novels, gastronomic writing, and health manuals. Her recent publications span topics from gut health to chocolate in French literature, revealing patterns of interdisciplinary scholarship that bridge historical medical concepts with literary analysis.

Dr. Mathias has received significant recognition for her work, including:

• George Sand Memorial Prize (2013) for her doctoral thesis
• Fellowship of the Royal Historical Society (2021-)

As an academic supervisor, Dr. Mathias currently mentors PhD students Donna Wilson (working on 'Translating narratives of autism') and Sophie Maddison (researching 'Urban Interconnections in the Works of Zola and Serao'). Her research has been generously supported by numerous grants including a Royal Society of Edinburgh Network Grant (£15,500) in 2021 for the Scottish Gut Project, a Society for French Studies Visiting International Fellowship in 2023, and multiple British Academy and Carnegie Trust awards.

Dr. Mathias co-directs the University of Glasgow Medical Humanities Research Centre and leads the Scottish Gut Project, an interdisciplinary initiative investigating links between gut disorders and mental health among Scottish patients. She is also Co-Director of the Scottish Food and Drink Histories artslab theme, demonstrating her commitment to interdisciplinary research that bridges humanities with health sciences. Her collaborative approach is evident in her work with scholars like Alison Moore on gut health and Elsa Richardson on the film 'Human Nature,' which explores the gut as a site of interaction between human and non-human elements.