Dr Vidya Vencatesan

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Dr Vidya Vencatesan

Dr Vidya Vencatesan is a Professor and Head of the Dept of French and Director Centre for European Studies, at the University of Mumbai. An alumnus of  Paris – 3 La Sorbonne Nouvelle, she has numerous national and international publications in French and English to her credit. She was the Honorary Secretary of the Asiatic Society of Mumbai. She is the Editor-in-Chief of India’s only peer-reviewed francophone research journal in India published in France since 2006. She is the Asia Coordinator for the prestigious MASTER CLE Programme, an Erasmus Mundus Masters programme in European Literary Cultures. She has been awarded three international awards, Chevalier de l’Ordre des Palmes académiques, Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, and Cavaliere dell’Ordine della Stella d’Italia from the Republics of France and Italy.

Visiting Faculty in many European Universities, she specialises in comparative literature and literary translation. She has translated Javed Akhtar’s poetic oeuvre into French (D’autres mondes, Paris, Editions Janus, 2014)  and Raphael Confiant into English (The Cane-cutter’s Song, India, Speaking Tiger, 2021). Her doctoral thesis is a comparative study of military companionship and brotherhood in French (Le Cycle de Guillaume d’Orange) and Indian epics (Valmiki Ramayana). Her present research interests include francophone literature of the Indian Ocean and the Caribbean and contemporary French literature.

Member, Governing Council