Research

Lyn Thomas's current research focuses on creative life writing, especially the work of Nobel prize winner (October 2022) Annie Ernaux, which she has engaged with in teaching and research since the early 90s. She has published two books on Ernaux: Annie Ernaux, an introduction to the writer and her audience (Berg, 1999) and Annie Ernaux, à la première personne (Stock, 2005), and numerous articles and chapters. Some of her recent publications on Ernaux include:

"La littérature anglaise a été ma vraie porte d'entrée en Angleterre" ("Literature was my real gateway to England") Interview with Annie Ernaux, Cahier de l'Herne: Ernaux, Pierre-Louis Fort (ed) 2022.

À la recherche de la jeune fille perdue: Annie Ernaux's Writing of Youth and Age in Mémoire de fille' in Kate Averis, Egle Kackute and Catherine Mao (eds) Transgressions in Twenty-First Century Women's Writing in French, Brill, Rodopi, 2021

'Voix blanche? Annie Ernaux, French Feminisms and the Challenge of Intersectionality' in Margaret Atack, Alison Fell, Diana Holmes and Imogen Long (eds), Making Waves, French Feminisms and their Legacies (Liverpool University Press, 2019)

‘Ennemies de classe ou âmes-sœurs : Virginia Woolf et Annie Ernaux’ (Class enemies or soul sisters: Virginia Woolf and Annie Ernaux) in Annie Ernaux : L’Intertextualité, Robert Kahn, Laurence Macé and Françoise Simonet-Tenant (eds), Rouen : Presses Universitaires de Rouen et du Havre, 2015.

Lyn has also published on: media audiences; 'quality' media and fan cultures; radio soap opera and radio audiences online; the relationship between religion, spirituality and media in contemporary Britain; representations of 'suspect communities' in the British press and impacts on Irish communities and Muslim communities living in Britain. Recent publications include a chapter entitled: "Sharing experiences of 'suspect communities' in Britain: Irish Catholic and Muslim women's 'voices in harmony'" in Contemporary Encounters in Gender and Religion (Gemzöe, Keinänen and Maddrell, eds) https://www.palgrave.com/de/book/9783319425979

Her creative writing includes a memoir Clothes Pegs: A Woman’s Life in 30 Outfits at http://www.clothespegs.net/.