Jeff Barda

Jeff Barda serves as Senior Lecturer in French Cultural Studies at the University of Manchester, joining in 2020 after a Junior Research Fellowship at Cambridge's Murray Edwards College. Awarded the Manchester Humanities Outstanding Teaching Award in 2020 and promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2023, he maintains active international affiliations including visiting positions at Bordeaux-Montaigne University and London's Institute of Languages, Cultures & Societies in 2024.

His research centers on contemporary French poetic practice with emphasis on digital poetics, sound arts, and avant-garde traditions. Key interests include the intersection of media and literature, lettrism, and data-driven creative processes, reflected in his extensive publications on figures like Pierre Alferi and Christophe Tarkos. His second monograph Data Poetics: Contemporary French Poetic Practice in the Age of Digital Overload is under contract with Liverpool University Press.

Dr Barda's scholarly impact is evidenced by the 2021 Literary Encyclopedia Book Prize for his first monograph Experimentation and the Lyric in Contemporary French Poetry. His recent publications demonstrate evolving focus from historical avant-gardes to contemporary digital poetics, with increasing attention to OSINT methodologies and cross-disciplinary practices like sports-literature intersections.

• Manchester Humanities Outstanding Teaching Award (2020)
• Literary Encyclopedia Book Prize (2021)

As an active supervisor welcoming PhD inquiries, Dr Barda contributes to multiple research networks including Marge (Lyon), the European Neo-Avant-Garde Network (Ghent), and 'After Social Networks' (Paris). His teaching excellence complements substantial grant activity supporting international collaborations, particularly in digital humanities initiatives exploring poetic practice in public spheres.

His research infrastructure includes affiliations with three major transnational networks examining contemporary creation, with recent projects focusing on image manipulation in poetry and OSINT applications in literary analysis.