Dr David McCallam

I specialise in the long eighteenth century in France, covering the French Enlightenment and the French Revolution. I have worked a lot on late eighteenth-century French literature (Chamfort, Laclos, Sade, de Maistre, etc.).

More recently, my research has focused on the environment in eighteenth-century France and Europe, specifically on dynamic geological and meteorological phenomena, such as volcanoes, avalanches and clouds. In 2019 I published a wide-ranging study on the cultural significance of volcanoes in eighteenth-century Europe (Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment, Liverpool University Press).

A more recent research interest is in the poetry of the late eighteenth century, especially in the context of the French Revolution. I published a bilingual edition of the last poems of André Chénier in 2021.