Dr Paul Gibbard was appointed as a Chief Investigator at the ARC Centre for the History of Emotions in 2017 and is a Lecturer in French at The University of Western Australia. He was also an Associate Investigator in 2015. He wrote his doctoral thesis at the University of Oxford on anarchism in late nineteenth-century English and French literature. After completing his DPhil. he worked for a number of years as a researcher and editor on the Complete Works of Voltaire at the Voltaire Foundation in Oxford. Since returning to Australia he has been involved in several research projects funded by the Australian Research Council: the Baudin Legacy Project with The University of Adelaide, and a project on Women’s Political Thought in the Enlightenment at Monash University. He has also lectured in French at the University of New England.
His research focuses mainly on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century writers: Voltaire, Rousseau, Zola and the French political thinker and translator Octavie Belot. Since his involvement in the Baudin Legacy Project, for which he translated the journal of the botanist Théodore Leschenault de la Tour, he has become interested in the relations between objectivity and sensibility in the scientific writings of the French naturalists who visited Australia with the French expedition of 1800‒1804.
Contact
paul.gibbard@uwa.edu.au
The University of Western Australia staff profile
Research
Epistolary Sensibility and Exploration: Australian Letters of the French Naturalists
Exploration, Empiricism and Sensibility: The Scientific Journals of the Baudin Expedition
An edition of alphabetical articles by Voltaire from the ‘Kehl collection’ for the Complete Works of Voltaire
Octavie Belot: philosopher, translator and salonnière
Relevent Publications
Books
Gibbard, P., translator and editor. The Dream, by Émile Zola, translated with an introduction and notes by P. Gibbard. Oxford World’s Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.
Gibbard, P., critical edition of the Lettres sur la Nouvelle Héloïse, in David Williams, et al., Voltaire: Writings of 1760‒1761 (II). Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2013.
Gibbard, P., et al., Voltaire: Questions sur l'Encyclopédie, par des amateurs (VIII) Privilèges-Zoroastre. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2013.
Gibbard, P., et al., Voltaire: Questions sur l’Encyclopédie, par des amateurs (VII) Langues-Prières. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2012.
Gibbard, P., et al., Voltaire: Questions sur l’Encyclopédie, par des amateurs (VI) Gargantua–Justice. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2011.
Gibbard, P., et al., Voltaire: Questions sur l’Encyclopédie, par des amateurs (V) Eglise–Fraude. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2010.
Gibbard, P., et al., Voltaire: Questions sur l’Encyclopédie, par des amateurs (IV) César–Egalité. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2009.
Gibbard, P., et al., Voltaire: Questions sur l’Encyclopédie, par des amateurs (III) Aristote–Certain. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2008.
Gibbard, P., et al., Voltaire: Questions sur l’Encyclopédie, par des amateurs (II) A–Aristée. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2007.
Gibbard, P. and Roger J. V. Cotte, critical editions of the Divertissement pour le mariage du roi Louis XV and La Fête de Bélesbat, in John Dunkley, et al., Voltaire: Writings of 1723‒1728. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2004.
Edited collection
Curtis-Wendlandt, L., P. Gibbard and K. Green, eds. Political Ideas of Enlightenment Women: Virtue and Citizenship. Farnham: Ashgate, 2013.
Book chapters
Gibbard, P. ‘Empiricism and Sensibility in the Australasian Journal of Théodore Leschenault de la Tour (1800–1803)’. In Natural History in Early Modern France: The Poetics of an Epistemic Genre, edited by R. Garrod and P. J. Smith, pp. 263–90. Leiden: Brill, 2018.
Gibbard, P. ‘Royalist and Radical: Octavie Belot on Rousseau and the Social Order’. In Political Ideas of Enlightenment Women: Virtue and Citizenship, edited by Lisa Curtis-Wendlandt, Paul Gibbard and Karen Green, pp. 33‒48. Farnham: Ashgate, 2013.
Gibbard, P. ‘Herbert Read and the Anarchist Aesthetic’. In To Hell with Culture: Anarchism in Twentieth-Century British Literature, edited by H. Gustav Klaus and Stephen Knight, pp. 97‒110. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2005.
Reference articles
‘Errico Malatesta, anarchist’. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, online edition.
‘Martial Bourdin, anarchist’. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 60 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004, vol. 2, pp. 64‒65.
Conference papers
Concluding plenary panel discussion, Third International Conference of the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions ‘The Future of Emotions: Conversations Without Borders’, The University of Western Australia, 14–15 June 2018.
‘Human Rights and the Emotions during the Enlightenment’, response to keynote speaker David Konstan, Emotions, Human Rights, and Humanitarianism event, 48th Annual Symposium of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 15‒17 November 2017, The University of Western Australia, Perth.
‘Obscenity and Truth: The Controversy Around the Publication of Zola’s La Terre’, Australian Society for French Studies conference, Australian National University, Canberra, 13‒15 December 2017.
‘Anger and Emile Zola’s Theory of the Emotions in The Dream (1888)’, 'Fears and Angers: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives' CHE/QMUL conference, Queen Mary University of London, 19‒20 June 2017.
‘Translating the Passions in Emile Zola’s Le Rêve’, Australian Society for French Studies conference, Newcastle, NSW, 11‒13 December 2015.
‘Science and Emotion in the Journal of Théodore Leschenault, Botanist Aboard the Baudin Expedition to Australia’, Australian Society of French Studies conference, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, 9‒11 December 2013.
‘Framing Slander: Voltaire’s Use of Pseudonyms in His Attacks on Rousseau’, Australian Society of French Studies conference, The University of Adelaide, 27‒29 September 2012.
‘Octavie Belot and the Dissolution of Social Hierarchy’, 14th Congress of the International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Graz, Austria, 25‒29 July 2011.
‘Octavie Belot’s Political Correspondence, 1759‒1792’, 14th Australasian David Nichol Smith Seminar, Melbourne, 4‒7 July 2011.
‘Leschenault and Péron: parallels and divergences’, ‘François Péron and the Figure of the Scientific Traveller’ conference, organised by The University of Adelaide, at Kingscote, Kangaroo Island, 26‒28 November 2010.
‘Octavie Belot on Rousseau and the social order’, ‘Womens’ Political Thought in Europe, 1700‒1800’, Prato Centre of Monash University, Prato, Italy, 25‒29 August 2010.
‘G. K. Chesterton, Anarchism, and The Man Who Was Thursday’, ‘Anarchism in Twentieth-Century British Writing and Culture’ conference, University of Rostock, Germany, 17‒19 May 2001.
Research Engagement
- Contributed research on ‘Théodore Leschenault de la Tour: The Affable Botanist’ to the exhibition ‘The Art of Science Baudin’s Voyagers, 1800-1804’, which toured Australia (South Australian Maritime Museum: 30 June–11 December 2016; Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston: 7 January–20 March 2017; Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart: 7 April–9 July 2017; Australian National Maritime Museum, Sydney: 31 August–26 November 2017; National Museum of Australia, Canberra: 15 March 11 June 2018; Western Australian Museum, Perth: 12 September–12 February 2019).