Sarah Davison

I am a PhD Researcher at the University of Manchester’s French Department. My doctoral thesis, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and supervised by Dr. Darren Waldron and Dr. Jospeh McGonagle, looks at Contemporary French Approaches to Representing Terrorism in Film (2001-2019).

My Research

The reaction to the fateful Charlie Hebdo and Bataclan attacks of 2015 illustrates the global reach of those terrorist events that unfold on French soil, and has positioned France as a symbol of urban western lifestyles that have come under threat. Analysing how visual culture approaches these events can shed light on broader political, ethical, and cultural responses to terrorism.

Now that French filmmakers have begun to release a variety of films dealing with terrorism since the 2015 attacks, this is the opportune moment to explore these socio-political questions and their impact on French representations of terrorism, to answer the timely question of French attitudes towards this new phenomenon. Working with the ethics of representation, my thesis seeks to bring these new releases into focus with France’s previous cinematic representations of traumatic events, and shed new light on attitudes amongst contemporary French filmmakers toward the terrorist incidents France has faced in the new millennium.