The Simon Gaunt Postgraduate Travel Grant
The grant is named after Professor Simon Gaunt, a world-leading scholar who transformed the theoretical landscape of medieval studies, as well as a dear colleague and ex-President of the Society. Simon died far too early in 2021, and this grant commemorates his commitment, supportiveness and capacity to inspire as supervisor and mentor for postgraduate students.
The grant (for a maximum of £1000) is designed to cover travel costs, conference fees if applicable, and to provide a stipend based on the estimate of expenses presented in the application. Projects will typically last for between five and ten days, although this could be extended if a strong case is made. The aim is to enable postgraduate students to travel abroad for a potentially career-transforming international event or activity (e.g. attendance at a major conference, access to a major collection).
The grant is a competitive award, and applications will be judged by a jury composed of the President and Vice-President of the Society and the executive officer in charge of research awards. There will usually be one grant awarded per year.
More information on the next round of funding (for a project to take place in the calendar year 2027) will be available in early 2027, with an anticipated deadline for applications of early April.
Eligibility
- The grant is open only to postgraduate research students (PhD, MA by Research or equivalent) enrolled on a programme in any aspect of French Studies at a university in Britain or Ireland. Applicants must be enrolled in a department or on a programme specifically concerned with French i.e. where studying material in the original languages (here primarily French and Occitan) is a structural requirement and part of teaching programmes.
- At the time of application the applicant must not yet have submitted their thesis/dissertation.
- Applicants must be members of the Society for French Studies.
Award recipients will be asked to present a short report on the activities enabled by the grant, which may appear in the Society’s publication the French Studies Bulletin.
Applications will be judged on the quality and feasibility of the objectives to be achieved during the study abroad, and the projected outcomes of the award for the applicant and for their research field.
2026 awards
We received 7 strong applications (compared with 9 last year, and 4 the previous year), all of which we agreed were worthy of serious consideration; and it was difficult to select a winner, given the worthwhile nature of the very diverse activities for which funding was being sought (and given that the funding necessary, and available, for different activities also varies significantly). We divided the prize between two applicants, each of whom receives £500.
- Leyla Chéry (Cambridge) is writing a thesis titled Trauma, Representation, and Survivance of Girlhood in Post-2010 Haitian Literature and the grant is supporting fieldwork in Northern Haiti involving surveys and interviews with secondary school students and educators, as well as visits to libraries and cultural spaces. The aim is to examine how contemporary Haitian literary texts circulate, are taught, and interpreted within Haiti itself, and so to 'investigate how narratives of girlhood, trauma, and resistance resonate with young readers in Haiti today, foregrounding literature not only as representation but as a practice of survivance, transmission, and repair.'
- Eleanor Dufton (Leeds) is working on the postwar trajectories of French Caribbean veterans. The grant will support work in several different archives in the summer of 2026 – military archives in Vincennes, the Archives Nationales, and records of public employers of Antillean migrants. Eleanor is looking for evidence of the lived experience of this group, understood through the lenses of empire, citizenship, race, and labour.
We congratulate both winners, and wish all applicants luck with their projects. The winners will both write reports for the French Studies Bulletin.
2025 awards
We received a strong field of applications and divided the prize between two applicants, who each received £500 to help support their research projects.
- Lou Khalfoui (University of Leeds), for a research trip to Sétif, Algeria, to undertake a series of interviews and attendance at commemorative events for the May 8th 1945 Sétif Massacres. Her report was published in French Studies Bulletin, 47.2-3 (2026).
- Paola Sanges Ghetti (Warwick University), for a research trip to the BNF to study the personal archive of the writer and director Wajdi Mouawad, the subject of her thesis.
2024 awards
For the inaugural 2024 round of the grant, the winners were:
- Adam Agowun (Warwick) for a study trip to Paris in support of his doctoral research on presidential image projection 1995-2017. His report was published in French Studies Bulletin, 46.2 (2025).
- Weibing Ni (Cambridge) to support a field trip to Guadeloupe to further research towards her PhD on Caribbean cultural hybridity. Her report was published in French Studies Bulletin, 46.4 (2025).