11: parallels & common grounds

A conversation with Julia Hartley, who was raised in Belgium by English and Italian parents. Currently a full-time researcher at the University of Warwick, she has a PhD in modern French and medieval Italian from the University of Oxford and an MA in Iranian Studies from the SOAS university of London. Julia is currently working on her second book, which looks at the portrayal of Iran in 19th century french literature and we talk about one of the defining characteristic of her academic work: finding connection between time periods and cultures which, at first glance, seem to have very little in common. We also talk about her experience learning Persian, her work in theatre, and the screenplay for a television series that she has written in the last several months.

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