Isabelle graduated from the Sorbonne in Paris and defended her Ph.D. on Victorian literature at the University of Sorbonne Nouvelle, before getting her “Habilitation à diriger des recherches” (allowing her to supervise doctoral candidates) from the University of Poitiers, France. While working on British literature, she also went on with further training in art history, and wrote a short thesis on a prominent 19th century English art collector, George Salting. Ever since, she has worked on the British circles of art amateurs and collectors and on the European fascination for the Orient at the end of the 19th century—a subject on which she organized several international conferences, published many articles, co-edited two books, and recently wrote a monograph, published by Routledge. Thus art history has always been at the center of her academic work (and of her life, since her husband is a painter). Born and bred in Paris, although she also lived in London and Madrid and traveled extensively in Europe, she knows and loves the French capital and will be delighted to rediscover it with students. Isabelle is currently Professor of British Art and Literature at the University of Poitiers. She is fluent in English and Spanish, studied the bases of the Persian language and, as her friends once put it in a song, “knows (almost) everything about museums, including those that are closed!”
