Once upon a time, coming from a not so far away country, Emmanuelle joined Aston University as a language assistant. Her desire to become a better teacher spurred her into embarking on a part-time PhD on ‘The Acquisition of French Past Tenses by Anglophone Learners’, while starting an appointment as a teaching fellow.

This got the ball rolling for a long-standing interest in all things verbal. Emmanuelle has extensively published on French tenses, their use and their evolution both on her own and in collaboration. Her research is inspired by authentic linguistic data, and she has been a prolific corpus gatherer over the years and has received a number of grants in Belgium, France and the UK for that purpose. Her projects include a monograph on the French passé simple, work on the go- and come-periphrases with Professor Jacques Bres (Montpellier 3), and a British Academy-funded research project on French in Brussels with Professor Florence Lefebvre (Paris 3, Sorbonne nouvelle) and Prof. Anne Dister (St Louis).  In 2022, Emmanuelle was one of three AHRC fellows for the Future of Language(s) Research with Prof. Michelle MacLeod (Aberdeen) and Prof. Nicola McLelland (Nottingham). Her project, Birmingham Research for Upholding Multilingualism (BRUM for short), looked at the local presence of and need for languages in education, business, public services and communities. BRUM has led to extensive contacts within the community. Emmanuelle secured in Autumn 2022 a grant from the Birmingham Voluntary Services Council as part of the Engage for Ukraine scheme to help refugees to overcome language barriers in the UK. Together with Dr Yvonne Fowler (a former public services interpreter [PSI] trainer) and PSI Rekha Narula, she ran three Emergency Interpreting Trainings and relaunched in December 22 the Aston Interpreters that is proving extremely popular. In recognition of her work, Emmanuelle has been invited to join the Birmingham City Healthcare EDI committee and she is planning training for healthcare professionals for 2023… To be continued…

Emmanuelle is keen to share her passion for languages with colleagues and students alike. Indeed, she has been involved in the Association for French Language Study (of which she is currently the President) since 2001 to promote French in academia, and she has organised over 20 academic conferences. She also likes to share her research in class, and to make her students budding researchers! At the University level, she was instrumental in the development of the University Wide Language Programme (that she led through a 10-fold development between 2007 and 2014) and initiated the launch of Languages for All, a scheme that was shortlisted for the Guardian University Awards 2013.

Emmanuelle has been convening Learning through Languages UK since 2018 and secured funding to organise teaching training in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) for schoolteachers. She hosts since November 2020 a monthly online seminar, CLIL Mondays.

Emmanuelle is currently the Director of the Aston Centre for Applied Linguistics and the representation of the Academic Assembly at the University Council since November 2022.