Professor Christophe Gagne

Christophe’s research interests lie in the fields of language use, contrastive pragmatics, translation, politeness theory and discourse analysis. His PhD thesis (Université Lumière Lyon II) was a contrastive analysis of French and British service encounters. He has an interest in intercultural communication and has given talks on the alleged rudeness of the French (Trinity French Society, Prince’s Teaching Institute, Cambridge Festival of Ideas). He is currently working on interruptions in parliamentary debates with a group of researchers from the University of Helsinki and the University of Lyon.

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 recently translated an anthology of poems on exile "Contre vents et marées" (CivicLeicester).  He has co-authored with Emilia Wilton Godberfforde a textbook on translating from English into French, the book was published by Routledge in 2020.

Christophe is also interested in popular culture and current affairs. He recently contributed entries to an Anthology of French and Francophone Singers. 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. He has also taken parts in events organized by MEITS or the Sutton Trust. He has in the last 4 years coordinated the French section’s participation to the Choix Goncourt organised by the Institut français. He is also keen to explore the benefits of creative writing in the language classroom.