Christophe’s interests lie in the fields of language use, contrastive pragmatics, translation and politeness theory. His PhD thesis (Université Lumière Lyon II) was a contrastive analysis of French and British service encounters. He has a particular interest in exploring why communication breakdown might occur when people from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds interact. He has given talks on the alleged rudeness of the French (Trinity French Society, Prince’s Teaching Institute, Cambridge Festival of Ideas, reviewed here).

Prior to working at Cambridge University Christophe worked as a translator for a private company. He has translated poetry by the novelist John Fowles (Greek poems = Poèmes grecs, The Greek Poems, Editions NG, 2001). He has co-authored with Emilia Wilton Godberfforde a textbook on translation in French for Routledge which was published in 2020.

Christophe is also interested in popular culture and current affairs. He recently contributed entries to an Anthology of French and Francophone Singers. He is currently preparing entries for an anthology of French film directors.

Christophe has produced various language-learning resources for the Language Centre – notably learning objects on Bourdieu, Césaire and Rousseau, designed to help learners develop their academic reading skills in French. Christophe was an External Assessor for a French course delivered by the Open University in 2016-2018.

Christophe is regularly involved in outreach events. He has been a judge for the final of the Routes into Languages Spelling Bee Competition on several occasions, and for the Mother Tongue Other Tongue Translation competition and taken parts in other events organized by MEITS or the Sutton Trust.