Hannah Grayson

Dr. Hannah Grayson is a Senior Lecturer in French and Francophone Studies at the University of Stirling. Her research focuses on textual responses to violence and instability in the French-speaking world, with a particular emphasis on colonialism, dictatorship, epidemics, conflict, genocide, and the interplay between resilience, vulnerability, and systemic injustice.

• Key themes: postcolonial narratives, survival, memory, and mobility

Her current British Academy-funded project, Changing Resilience: Alternative Vocabularies, critiques colonial undertones in resilience discourse and explores alternatives like débrouillardise (wily resourcefulness) in postcolonial literature. She has authored a forthcoming monograph on Guinean author Tierno Monénembo, Nomads' Land (Liverpool University Press), analyzing his poetics of movement.

Dr. Grayson contributes to interdisciplinary research on Rwanda through the RwandaMAP team and co-edited Rwanda Since 1994: Stories of Change (Liverpool University Press, 2019) and After the Genocide in Rwanda (I.B. Tauris, 2019). She supervises a PhD student in postcolonial women’s writing and teaches across undergraduate modules in French studies. Her leadership roles include Learning and Teaching Officer for Literature and Languages and co-director of Postcolonial Studies at Stirling.

• Scientific awards: Kluge Fellowship (2024) for transatlantic pan-African festival research
• Grants: British Academy, FSPI (French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2025)
• Collaborations: RwandaMAP international team, Extreme Events research programme