Raphaël Costambeys-Kempczynski

Raphaël is maître de conferences at the Sorbonne, Paris, where he lectures in English literature, Cultural Studies, Media Studies and Radio Journalism. Though born and bred in England, Raphaël has spent much of his adult life travelling between London, Edinburgh, Dublin and the Continent. After a short career as a rock band front man and music critic, he worked for several years as a radio presenter/producer and is currently piloting the Radio Sorbonne project. His radio work mainly focuses on the analysis of British current affairs with a cultural angle as well as issues dealing with the reception of popular music. He is known in radio circles as the "Dr of Pop". He completed his PhD in 2001 on the performances of postmodernity in contemporary British poetry and subsequently left his home in Britain to take up his post in Paris.

His research interests focus on the performances of the figures of postmodernity and their availability as signifying codes in literature, music, advertising, politics, journalism, and other forms of cultural manifestation. These analyses attempt to tackle the politico-cultural and semiotic dimension of the text, the aim being to understand how the fictions behind common places are inscribed within contemporary cultural production and communication systems. Raphaël has spoken and published widely on contemporary British poetry, manifestations of cultural communication, the performance of contemporary identities in contemporary British cultural production, the representation and construction of the fictions of consensus and subversion, and the place of operational fictions in contemporary British cultural production.