Mary Franklin-Brown

Mary Franklin-Brown serves as University Associate Professor in the Faculty of Modern & Medieval Languages and Linguistics at the University of Cambridge, specifically within the French department. She is also Director of Studies for Modern & Medieval Languages (Part IA and Part II), Postgraduate Tutor, and Honorary Keeper of the Plate Department at Christ's College.

Education: Dr Franklin-Brown completed her undergraduate studies at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, earned A.M. degrees there, and received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Berkeley. She also pursued studies in France at Toulouse and Paris.

Research Focus: Her scholarship centers on medieval writing in French, Occitan, Latin, and Catalan, interpreted through medieval philosophy and contemporary critical theory. She examines the material transmission of texts through performance and manuscript copies. Current projects include:

• Time and the Lyric - analyzing 12th-century conceptions of time through Latin poetry, quadrivium studies, calendars, and humanist commentaries
• Poetry, Politics, and Community - interpreting 11th-12th century vernacular poetry through modern community theories
• Studies on troubadour lyric and medieval chess culture

Awards & Recognition: She received the prestigious Harry Levin Prize from the American Comparative Literature Association for her book Reading the World: Encyclopedic Writing of the Scholastic Age (2012), a Foucauldian archaeology of medieval encyclopedias. She is also President of the International Medieval Society, Paris.

Advising & Grants: Dr Franklin-Brown welcomes inquiries from prospective MPhil and PhD students whose research aligns with her interests. She has extensive experience in archival research in France and has held fellowships at the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study at Harvard University.

Previous Positions: Before joining Cambridge in 2019, she taught in the Department of French and Italian at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities for many years.