Professor Susan Harrow FBA

Summary

Susan Harrow was born and educated on Scotland’s east coast, where she studied at the University of Edinburgh. During her PhD research, she studied at the Ecole Normale Supérieure (rue d’Ulm, Paris) as a French Government Scholar. Harrow taught at the universities of Rouen and Besançon in France, before appointments at the universities of Swansea, Sheffield, and Bristol. She is Ashley Watkins Professor of French at the University of Bristol.

Harrow’s expertise spans French narrative and poetry of the broad modern era, with a particular focus on visual/textual cultures, modernism(s), and literary naturalism. Her most recent monograph makes an advance in comparative thematic epistolary studies. Her research has been supported by the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, the AHRC, and the Leverhulme Trust.

Harrow was Joint Winner of the R. Gapper Book Prize in 2021 for her monograph on colour in modern French poetry and art writing. She held a Distinguished Research Fellowship at the Université de Grenoble-Alpes in 2025.

Harrow is a former President of the Society for French Studies, the oldest and largest scholarly association in this field. In 2025, the Modern Humanities Research Association appointed Harrow as the first female General Editor of the Legenda imprint. She was appointed Officier in the Ordre des Palmes Académiques for services to French culture and education, in 2011.