Professor Neil Kenny

Professor of French
BA, DPhil, FBA
Senior Research Fellow since 2012

I mainly work on the literary, social, and intellectual history of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century France. My current work is on the early modern relation between literature and learning on the one hand, and social hierarchy on the other. Previous projects on encyclopaedism, curiosity, and posthumous presence investigated how different kinds of knowledge and belief were represented, and in particular how they were shaped by language.

Through the British Academy I am involved in work on language policy within education and society.