The Institute of Modern Languages Research (IMLR) has great pleasure in announcing the appointment of Professor Catherine Davies as its new director. Currently Professor of Hispanic and Latin American studies at Nottingham University, Catherine Davies will succeed Professor Bill Marshall, who returns to the School of Languages, Cultures and Religions at the University of Stirling. She will assume the directorship from 1 August 2014 on secondment from Nottingham. Dr Katia Pizzi will serve as Acting Director until this date.  

Aventures et expériences littéraires: Écritures des femmes en France au début du vingt-et-unième siècle is the latest title to be published arising from an event organised by the Centre for the Study of Contemporary Women's Writing at the IMLR.

It has just been announced that Katia Pizzi's Pinocchio, Puppets and Modernity: The Mechanical Body has been selected as the 2012 Edited Book Award winner. The award, made by the Children's Literature Association, is in recognition of the significant contribution to children's literature scholarship made by the book.

The Institute is delighted to announce that the winners of the 2013 Bithell Prizes are Judith Vonberg (QMUL) and Nicholas Potter (KCL). Judith Vonberg beat stiff competition to win the Jethro Bithell Prize, awarded for the best performance in German in an MA/MRes programme at one of the Colleges of the University of London. She presented a dissertation entitled 'The Denken/Handeln topos: Hamlet in post-1945 Germany' as part of her MA degree course in Anglo-German Cultural Relations at Queen Mary, University of London.