Professor Hugh Roberts

My teaching and research focus on the intersection between French literature and philosophy. My research has concentrated on the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries yet I have recently taken a new direction to pursue interests in the philosopher, social activist, and mystic, Simone Weil (1909-1943).

Since summer 2023, I've also been University of Exeter lead of a project to facilitate translation and promotion of Ukrainian wartime poetry. We've published two translations of collections by two poet-soldiers written since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, both with the support of grants from the Ukrainian Book Institute:

Artur Dron', We Were Here, translated by Yuliya Musakovska, edited by Hugh Roberts and Helen Vassallo with Fiona Benson and Charlotte Shevchenko Knight (London: Jantar, 2024)

Yaryna Chornohuz, [dasein: defence of presence], translated by Amelia Glaser with Hugh Roberts and Fiona Benson (London: Jantar, 2025). 

The project derives from a partnership between the University of Exeter and Exeter City of Literature, through whom we've connected to Lviv City of Literature via the UNESCO Creative Cities Network. Lviv City of Literature host a co-created YouTube playlist.

As part of a range of public engagement activity since the beginning of the project, we showcased the work at the Lviv BookForum in October 2025. See the article by the poet and fellow editor Fiona Benson, '"After the reading, the poets hold each other": what happens when Ukraine's biggest literary festival comes under Russian attack', in The Guardian.

In November 2025, we'll host Yaryna Chornohuz for events including public readings in Exeter and London and a closed meeting for trainees at Commando Training Centre Royal Marines, funded by Being Human Festival, the UK's national festival of the humanities. 

For updates on this project, see my Instagram and LinkedIn.

See also recent Open Access publications:

'The Blind Person's Stick in Weil and Descartes', Ecokritike, 2 (2025);

'Simone Weil and George Herbert on Love through Poetry', Forum for Modern Language Studies, 59 (2023).

Research supervision:

I am happy to discuss research proposals on any subject relating to my research and teaching interests.