Faculty

Nadine Airut holds a degree in French (DEA de Français Langue Etrangère) in Teaching French to foreign students, and a masters degree in English Literature and Civilisation.
She has been teaching French language in NYU for 18 years to all students of all levels of French.
She has also taught in other schools and programs, such as the Alliance Française in Paris for 5 years, in Hamilton and Smith College, and in Paris Dauphine for 5 years.

Sam Azulys has a doctorate in Philosophy from the Sorbonne (University of Paris I); he teaches cinema at NYU Paris and at the INSEEC Business School, and lectures regularly on cinema and visual culture. His publications include a book on Stanley Kubrick (Stanley Kubrick, une odyssée philosophique, Editions de la Transparence, 2011) and another on the series "Game of Thrones," Philosopher avec Game of Thrones (Editions Ellipses, 2016). Azulys is also a filmmaker and playwright. His play Récréation was performed at the Avignon Theatre Festival in 2018.

Visual artist originally from Canada, Nicolas Baudouin came to Paris to complete a Master degree in Aesthetics (philosophy of arts) at the University of Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne. He spent teh last 15 years studying the mutations related to the new practices of photography and the raise of what he called “post-photography”.

He is searching and exploring those new practices looking for a new image that would have this intermediate quality in being between virtuality and reality. Nicolas Baudouin is also teaching art history and photography in different American programs in Paris such as NYU, Columbia and Stanford.

Valérie Berty has a Ph.D in Sociology of Literature from the Ecole de Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences). She teaches literature and cinema, as well as French language courses.

Valérie has specialized in African literature and cinema. She published a collective book on writers-filmmakers and published, in February 2019, a book on Ousmane Sembène, writer and first African fiction filmmaker.

Max Blechman studied philosophy at the New School for Social Research, the University of Paris I Sorbonne and the University of Chicago. He defended his PhD thesis, “Rousseau: The Politics of Common Sense,” at the Center for Research in Modern European Philosophy, Kingston University, with Peter Hallward as his director and Jacques Rancière as his external examiner. He has published on Rousseau, Romanticism, Marx, Adorno, and contemporary French political philosophy and anthropology. Max Blechman teaches the history of Ancient, medieval and Renaissance philosophy (Social Foudations I and II) at NYU-Paris since 2015. He is currently writing a book on the origins of heroism and tragedy.

Augustin Cosse holds a postdoctoral position in mathematics at Ecole Normale Supérieure where he works on questions related to signal processing and optimization, machine learning, numerical analysis and statistics. Prior to that, he was a visiting postdoctoral fellow at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences and NYU Center for Data Science (2016-2017). He completed his PhD in 2016 under the supervision of Laurent Demanet (MIT) and Laurent Jacques (UCL) in applied mathematics and electrical engineering. He was a visiting fellow at Harvard IACS (2014-2015) as well as the University of Chicago, Department of Statistics (2015-2016). His research interests include the mathematics of machine learning, statistics, applied analysis and optimization as well as inverse problems.

Cécile Cotté majored in Theater studies at Université de Censier in Paris. She was a student of Daniel Mesguich at the Ecole du Miroir.
She also a has a diploma from the Ecole Internationale de théâtre Jacques Lecoq.

She is a pluridisciplinary theater professional and her work includes directing, acting, writing, and teaching for live theater, cinema, radio, and television.

She has been teaching theater at NYU Paris since 2002.

Professor of French as a Foreign Language, graduated from Paris Diderot University (Paris VII), Isabelle Coydon is a phonetics specialist, graduated from Sorbonne Nouvelle University (Paris III). She is responsible for the Tandem Paris-NYU language exchange program, she also teaches at La Sorbonne and Sciences Po Paris. She is an author of several French learning text books.

I am a global lecturer at NYU Paris and an associate member of the Institut Jean-Nicod (CNRS-ENS-EHESS). I am interested in the normative constraints at the basis of linguistic expression, and in the epistemology of disciplines that are concerned with natural language.

With 2 degrees in German and Hispanic studies from the Sorbonne (Paris IV), and a Masters and Doctorate in Comparative Literature from Oxford (English, French, German, Spanish), Claire de Obaldia has taught comparative literature at Oxford, Geneva, the Sorbonne, and different American universities in Paris and London since the 1990s. In 2000 she also became a certified teacher of the FM Alexander Technique (somatic education), combining her academic activity with that of teaching Alexander’s work both privately and on teacher training courses in Paris and London.

Her publications include The Essayistic Spirit (Oxford University Press, 1995); L’Esprit de l’essai, de Montaigne à Borges (Coll. Poétique, Seuil, 2005); «Floating Islands », an essay on philosophies of education in : Alexander in Context (Hite, London 2014) ; « Emerging Selves », in : Alexander Life Stories (Alexander Trust, London, 2016) .

Educated at the Lycée Louis-Le-Grand, Jean-Philippe Dedieu holds an MBA from ESSEC Business School and a Ph.D. in History and Sociology from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS). His research focuses on the political history and sociology of African diaspora.
In addition to his contributions to The New Yorker and The New York Times, Jean-Philippe Dedieu’s scholarly articles have appeared in African Studies Review, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Foreign Affairs, and Humanity, among others. He has published a book in French: Immigrant Voices: African Migrants in the Public Sphere in France, 1960-1995 (Paris: Klincksieck, 2012).
A former Fulbright Scholar at University of California, Berkeley, Jean-Philippe Dedieu received a CIRHUS Fellowship at New York University in 2014, a Weatherhead Initiative on Global History Fellowship at Harvard University in 2015, and a Senior Fellowship from the Max Weber Foundation in 2018.

Professor Epstein is Associate Director for Academic Affairs at NYU Paris, and Associate Faculty at The Gallatin School. She received her Ph.D. in anthropology from NYU where she also studied in the Program in Culture and Media. Her research focuses on the politics of integration and immigration in France as well as on French and American perspectives on race. Recent publications include Collective Terms: Race, Culture and Community in a State-Planned City in France (Berghahn Books 2011), “Redemptive Politics: Racial Reasoning in Contemporary France,” Patterns of Prejudice, 2016, and “Promise Postponed: Republican Values, Social Exclusion, and the French banlieue”, International Social Science Journal, 2017.

Ariane Fennetaux joined NYU Paris in 2017 where she's been teaching the Fashion and Power course. An Ecole Normale Supérieure (Paris) and Courtauld Institute of Art (London) Alumna, Ariane's research focuses on various aspects of dress and material culture. She has edited several books including in 2015 The Afterlife of Used Things, Recycling in the Long 18th century, published by Routledge. In 2019 she co-authored with Barbara Burman, The Pocket: a Hidden History of Women’s Lives 1660-1900, published by Yale University Press.

Denis Ferré has the Agregation of History, France's highest teaching degree. He holds an MA in contemporary history, with a concentration on teaching the French revolution, and an MA in political science from the Institut d'Études Politiques de Grenoble (his thesis was on the
sociological study of the socialist party representatives). He has extensive experience teaching for the French national high school system and has been a teacher and a graduate student supervisor for
NYU in France since January 2000. He taught a course in English for Central College-Paris in 2008(History of France).

He teaches for the Institute for European Studies and Jeannine Manuel International School in Paris.

Alfred Galichon is the director of NYU Paris and a professor of economics (Arts & Science) and of mathematics (Courant Institute) at New York University. His research interests lies at the intersection of economics, mathematics, and data science. He is the author of a monograph and about forty research articles that have appeared in prestigious journals. He is a co-editor of Economic Theory and he has served as the principal investigator of grants under the European Research Council (ERC) and the National Science Foundation (NSF). Alfred holds a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University, and degrees from Ecole Polytechnique and Corps des Mines. He is a “Young leader” of the French-American foundation, and a past recipient of the Edmond Malinvaud prize.

Nicolas Garnier is an anthropologist who is currently Chief Curator for the Pacific at the Musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac in Paris. He was previously dean for Research and Postgraduate Studies at the University of Papua New Guinea. There he implemented an academic program on cultural heritage management and an anthropological program on contemporary artistic expressions in the Pacific. In the last twenty years, he has encouraged and supervised the creation and the development of small scale cultural centres and museums throughout Papua New Guinea. He is completing an Habilitation Thesis on Papua New Guinea contemporary art.

Patrick Guédon received a Master in British Literature & Civilization from Paris 7 (Denis Diderot), a Master in French as a Foreign Language from Paris 3 (Sorbonne Nouvelle) and a D.E.S.S. from Paris 3.

He currently teaches French language at New York University in France, Middlebury College – School in France. He also teaches phonetics in the Middlebury College French Language School Summer Intensive Program in Vermont.
His research interests include languages (he speaks French, English, Spanish and German) and teaching & learning.

Patrick published numerous text books, teacher’s book and also videos (Taxi ! ; Vivez les affaires…). He recently published « La grammaire du français en 40 leçons et 201 activités – niveau B1 » (Éditions Maison des Langues) and wrote the cultural section (Abécédaire Culturel) in “Alter Ego + 4” textbook (Hachette Français Langue Étrangère).

After a childhood spent between Beirut, Lebanon and New York City, Professor Healey completed her undergraduate work at Bryn Mawr College and her Ph. D. in Early Modern French History at the Johns Hopkins University. She has been teaching, researching and writing in France ever since. Her research interests are French Social and Cultural History (Early Modern and Modern)- The History of Paris -The Social and Cultural History of the Great War - History and Memory - Women’s History and Gender Studies.

P.J. Henry is an associate professor and founding psychology faculty member at NYU Abu Dhabi. He studies prejudice and discrimination, from both the perpetrator and the victim perspectives; his most recent research explores the social psychology of gender and the consequences of the different values given to masculinity and femininity. He received his Ph.D. in social psychology from UCLA in 2001, and before joining NYU held research and teaching positions at the American University of Beirut, UC-Santa Barbara, Yale, and DePaul University. 

Joachim Lebovits holds a Ph.D. in Mathematics, Sorbonne University (former University Paris VI, Pierre et Marie Curie) and École Centrale Paris, his research interests are Probability and their applications, such as Mathematical Finance and Biology.

Marie Lepetit is the Director of the Art Center in Amiens (France) where she oversees its academics and administratives activities and develops relationships with local and national artists building exhibitions and teaches workshops. This Art Center's mission is developping a human culture for all, and creating a diverse space for individuals from very broad horizons to meet.

Outside of teaching at NYU Paris and directing the Amiens Art Center, she continues her work, drawing and painting, and participates in many exhibitions in France and abroad. Her current research project investigates the connection of painting, drawing and digital.

Before joining NYU, she taught painting and drawing at the Amiens University (UPJV), France.

A researcher in postcolonial studies, Dr. Anna Lesne has studied representations of place and collective identity in scientific and literary texts produced in and on the French Caribbean, and the role played by writers and public intellectuals, including Aimé Césaire and Edouard Glissant.

She’s developed an interest in critical geography while teaching at NYU. She now studies issues of power, inequalities, discriminations and resistance in global cities, in particular Paris.
These are key topics in her Experiential Learning seminars for GLS students, along with research methods. She also teaches the Internship Seminar, where students develop a research project based on a fieldwork experience (a two-month internship in Paris).

Before teaching at NYU, Anna Lesne has lived on four continents, taught in a few universities and been a journalist for five years.

She has a Ph.D. in Social and Cultural Anthropology from the Université de Provence and an M.A. in Comparative Literature from the Sorbonne.

Isabelle de Maison Rouge is an art historian and an art critic. She has a Ph.D. in art and art sciences from La Sorbonne. The last book published is «Le mythe de l'artiste, au-delà des idées acquis», Le cavalier Bleu éditions - 2017. She writes numerous contemporary art essays and texts for art catalogues and actively contributes to various contemporary art magazines (artpress, Optical Sound, Possible, Point Contemporain). She is Secretary-Genral of AICA France.

She is also a lecturer for contemporary art at New York University Paris, HEC and Audencia Business School.

As a freelance curator, she explores themes she studies (such as Business model, le paradoxe du cartel, Trouble d’identité) and artists she supports. As a researcher, she focuses on the artist economy, artist business, art world, collectors, female artists, duo artists, art and law, bridges between art and management, art and geopolitics or art and care.

Elizabeth Molkou received her Ph.D. in French from McGill University in Canada. She currently teaches French language, civilization, and literature at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques (“Sciences Po”) as well as French language for the Stanford Program in Paris. Her research interests include autobiographical theory, autofiction in contemporary French literature, and the representation of Paris in contemporary fiction; her critical writing is informed by an interest in the relationship between language and identity. In 2010, she published Identités juives et autofiction: de la Shoah à la post-modernité at Editions Universitaires Européennes.

Ph.d Sociology and History of Religions, University of Chicago
S. Romi Mukherjee is a sociologist and historian of religion whose research, broadly construed, examines the untimely collisions of the religious and the political in the contemporary moment.
Previously to coming to NYU-Paris, he was a Research Fellow at the Centre Interdisciplinaire pour la Recherche Comparative en Sciences Sociales (2007-2009) where he worked on a series of European Commission research projects (Framework 7) concerning sustainable diversity, secularism and the return of religion, and collective
memory. He was also a researcher at UNESCO in the Social and Human Sciences Sector (2009 - 2014) where he worked on issues pertaining to the anthropology of technology and the ethics of climate change. Since 2006, he also taught in the department of Political Humanities at Sciences Po – Paris. Committed to radical interdisciplinarity and transversal approaches to politics and
philosophy, he has published widely on inter alia the French Republic and its Discontents, Cultures of the Anthropocence, the Psychology of Terrorism, Trumpism and Political Theology, Georges Bataille, George Orwell, Frantz Fanon, and Gilles Deleuze.
Recent monographs and edited volumes include: Durkheim and Violence (Blackwell, 2010), Social Memory and Hypermodernity (Blackwell, 2012, with Éric Brian et Marie
Jaisson) and Nouveaux visages du religieux dans un monde sécularisé (Karthala, 205, with Lionel Obadia, Karthala, 2015).
At NYU-Paris, he teaches “Social Foundations I & II,” the “Global Media Seminar: Media, Culture, and Politics in France,” and “What is Technology; Critical Approaches to ‘Man,’ Machines, and Material Culture.” His current research project attempts to lay the foundations for the “Buddhist Turn in Critical Theory” and recasts notions of “impermanence,” “no-self,” and “no-thing” against the backdrop of continental philosophy and psychoanalysis.

After a degree in German and a degree in Language Sciences, Cécile Petit turned to teaching French as a Foreign Language (FLE) and obtained a University Diploma in Language Didactics and a Master 2 in French Didactics Research. and Languages at the Sorbonne Nouvelle.
Since 2008, she teaches FLE at NYU Paris at various levels.

During her career, she has also taught at the Sorbonne, The American University of Paris, Parsons Paris and Stanford University Program in Paris.

Ecole Normale Supérieure of Fontenay Saint-Cloud alumn and Associate Professor of Economics and Social Sciences, and habilitated to direct research at Paris 10 University, Martial Poirson is professor of cultural history, literature and theatrical studies at Paris 8 University, where he directs the team "History, politics and socio-economics of arts, culture and creation." He is also a lecturer at New York University Paris and works in several grandes écoles (Sciences Po, ESSEC, Audencia). He was in charge of mission at the National Library of France, the Comédie-Française and the French National Agency for Research.

He has published several books, including Spectacle et économie à l’âge classique (Classiques Garnier, 2011), Les Audiences de Thalie (Classics Garnier, 2013), Économie du spectacle (Puf, "Que-sais-je?", 2013 with I. Barbéris), Politique de la représentation (Champion, 2014), Comédie-Française : une histoire du théâtre (Seuil, "Fine Books", 2018, with Agathe Sanjuan) and Manuel des Etudes Theatrales (Armand Colin, 2019). He has coordinated more than thirty books on theater, literature, cinema, museums, political economy or popular culture. He is also curator of exhibitions in France (Museum of the French Revolution, Versailles Museum, Conciergerie) and abroad (Switzerland, Canada), playwright, artistic consultant and consultant in the management of culture and arts. He has been teaching in the undergraduate and graduate programs of NYU since 2002, where he currently teaches the course on contemporary France (generation, class, gender, race) and the history of Versailles.

Karen Ralph received her Ph.D. in medieval art history from Trinity College Dublin in 2014.  Her research interests focus primarily on patronage of art and architecture in late medieval Ireland. 

Ludovic Sardain is a pianist, composer, and choir conductor. As a pianist, he specializes in chamber music and vocal accompaniment. In addition, he is also an independent game developer. He created DoSolFa, a smartphone game to learn or improve reading musical notes.

Léa Scattolin holds both an M.A. in French as a Foreign Language and an M.A. in Communications and Publishing from the University of Paris Sorbonne, which she combined with a third degree in Applied Foreign Languages (German, English and Polish) from the University of Blaise Pascal, Clermont-Ferrand II.

She is fond of travelling and lived in Germany, Finland and Australia as a student. This is where she discovered her passion for teaching her mother tongue to foreign people.
Since then, she has taught in different Parisian schools for groups of international students from around the world, has led French language and civilization courses to Chinese students at the University of Paris XI and gained considerable practical work experience with American students abroad as both an Academic Coordinator and a French teacher for institutions such as UC, Yale, Harvard, Columbia and Carleton College. She has been teaching French Language courses at NYU Paris since 2012.

Laure-Caroline Semmer completed her PhD in Art History at La Sorbonne (Paris 1) with a focus on the critical reception of Paul Cezanne. Specialized in French 19th century and early 20th century, she has taught at the Sorbonne and is curently working for French and American universities, such as NYU Paris, SciencesPo, University of Connecticut. Focusing on the educational aspect of art history and the idea of transmission, she wrote several articles for the French minister of Education and published several books dedicated to Modern art.

Christelle Taraud is a historian specializing in women, gender and sexuality in the Maghreb colonial context. She teaches in the Paris program at New York University and is an associate member of the Center d'histoire du XIXe siècle (Paris I-Paris IV). She is the author of La Prostitution Coloniale. Algerie, Tunisie, Maroc, 1830-1962, (Payot, 2003 and 2009) and Amour interdit. Prostitution, marginalité et colonialisme. Maghreb, 1830-1962 (Payot, 2012). She has co-directed Sex, Race and Colonies. La domination des corps du XV^e siècle à nos jours (La Découverte, 2018).

Acclaimed by Le Monde in 2017, David Uhrig's research on Maurice Blanchot’s political writings brought to light some of the most confidential texts of the 1930’s literary France (see Chroniques politiques des années trente, 1931-1940, Gallimard, 2017, 560 pages). David Uhrig's major research interests concern the impact of writing on politics, from journalism to literature. He taught French language and literature in the U.S. (University of Massachusetts Boston), in France (University of Paris-Nord and American University of Paris) as well as in the U.K. (University of Leicester) before joining NYU Paris in 2012.

Sarah Vaussier is a phonetic and french teacher. After studying theater in Nanterre university, she holds a master in FLE (Français Langue Etrangère).

She has been teaching French as a foreign language at several institutions such as the Alliance française of Paris, Sciences Po, or Cours de Civilisation Fançaise de la Sorbonne.

She has a theater company and is also a theater teacher in Cours Florent.

Frédérique de Vignemont is a CNRS senior researcher in philosophy in Paris. She is the deputy director of the Jean Nicod Institute (Ecole Normale Supérieure) as well as a philosophy scholar in residence at NYU Paris. She is also one of the executive editors of the Review of Philosophy and Psychology. Her research is at the intersection of philosophy of mind and cognitive science. Her major current works focus on bodily awareness, self-consciousness, and social cognition. She has published widely in philosophy and psychology journals on the first-person, body schema, agency, empathy, and more recently on pain. Her new book, Mind the Body (Oxford University Press, 2018), provides the first comprehensive treatment of bodily awareness and of the sense of bodily ownership, combining philosophical analysis with recent experimental results from cognitive science. She was awarded a Fulbright fellowship after her PhD to work at NYU and she was the recipient of the 2015 Young Mind & Brain prize for her achievement in advancing our knowledge about mind and brain.

Aurora Wallace received her PhD from McGill University and is a professor in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University specializing in the areas of media history, urbanism, architecture, and crime. She is the author of Media Capital: Architecture and Communication in New York City (University of Illinois Press, 2012) and Newspapers and the Making of Modern America (2005) as well as articles in Journalism History, Philosophy and Geography, Space and Culture, Environmental Values, Journal of Visual Culture, and Crime, Media, Culture. She is currently serving as European Director of Media, Culture, and Communication based at NYU Paris. 

Gabriel Wick teaches the Paris architecture and urbanism field-study which examines the development of the city’s urban form and architecture from the Gallo-Roman period to the present day. Born in England and raised in New York and Philadelphia, he worked in urban design and campus planning in New York and Paris before shifting his focus to the study of urban and landscape history. His fascination for cities, their form, social geography and architecture was honed during his undergraduate studies at NYU’s department of Fine Arts and the Gallatin School. He went on to train in landscape architecture at UC Berkeley and in landscape conservation at ÉNSA-Versailles. He completed his doctorate in history at the University of London – Queen Mary in 2017. His historical research focuses on the role that urban public spaces played in the political life of Paris and the French monarchy in the decades before the Revolution. His publications and curatorial projects build on his skillsets as a researcher, designer and draughtsperson to reconstitute lost eighteenth-century landscapes – most notably the gardens of Méréville, La Roche-Guyon, Monceau, and the domain of the Noailles in Saint-Germain-en-Laye. In 2017 he curated Hubert Robert et la fabrique des jardins (Château of La Roche-Guyon, 09/09/17– 11/26/17), the first monographic exhibition dedicated to the landscape gardens and ornamental ruins built by this enigmatic eighteenth-century painter and designer.