Lisa Downing is a literary critic, author

Author

An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

 and academic. She is Professor

Professor

A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...

 of French Discourses of Sexuality at the University of Exeter

University of Exeter

The University of Exeter is a public university in South West England. It belongs to the 1994 Group, an association of 19 of the United Kingdom's smaller research-intensive universities....

.

Downing's work is innovative in its dialogue between the critical humanities and the sciences, especially psychiatry. Her work focuses principally on theories of sexual perversion, Michel Foucault

Michel Foucault

Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...

, and ethical philosophy and film.

Background and Career

Downing trained in modern European languages and literatures at the Universities of London and Oxford. Since then, she has gone on to work at Queen Mary, University of London

Queen Mary, University of London

Queen Mary, University of London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and a constituent college of the federal University of London...

 and the University of Exeter, where she was appointed to a Chair in 2006, at the age of 31.

She is the founder and Director of the Centre for the Interdisciplinary Study of Sexuality and Gender in Europe and also is one of co-organisers of the interdisciplinary seminar series "Critical Sexology".

Works

Books as author:

• Desiring the Dead: Necrophilia and Nineteenth-Century French Literature (2003)
• Patrice Leconte (French Film Directors Series; 2004)
• The Cambridge Introduction to Michel Foucault (2008)
• Film and Ethics: Foreclosed Encounters (with Libby Saxton, 2009)
• The Subject of Murder (forthcoming)

Books as editor:

• Currencies: Fiscal Fortunes and Cultural Capital in Nineteenth-Century France (with Sarah Capitanio, Paul Rowe and Nick White; 2005)
• Perversion: Psychoanalytic Perspectives/ Perspectives on Psychoanalysis (with Dany Nobus; 2006)
• Birth and Death in Nineteenth-Century French Culture (with Nigel Harkness, Sonya Stephens and Tim Unwin; 2007)
• From Perversion to Purity: The Stardom of Catherine Deneuve (with Sue Harris; 2007)
• Queer in Europe: Contemporary Case Studies (with Robert Gillett; 2011)

Awards

• Downing received a 2009 Philip Leverhulme Prize
  Philip Leverhulme Prize
  The Philip Leverhulme Prize, awarded by the Leverhulme Trust, is to recognise outstanding young scholars who have made a substantial and recognised contribution to their particular field of study, recognised at an international level, and where the expectation is that their greatest achievement is...
  
  , a prize "awarded to outstanding scholars under the age of 36 who have made a substantial contribution to their field of study, are recognised at an international level, and whose future contributions are held to be of correspondingly high promise."

External links