Julia Prest

Julia Prest is Professor of French and Caribbean Studies. Prior to coming to St Andrews in 2009, she held academic positions at Yale University (2002-09) and at Jesus College, Oxford (1999-2002). She wrote her PhD at the University of Cambridge, having studied French and Music at the University of Birmingham.

Current and Recent Research

Julia Prest's research interests focus on early-modern French, francophone and Creole theatre, including opera and dance.  She is currently working on a new project on dance and disability in France and the colonial Caribbean, and has published an article on performing disability in French court ballet: https://doi.org/10.1080/20563035.2025.2481036. Her latest monograph, Public Theatre and the Enslaved People of Colonial Saint-Domingue (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023; 2024) was joint winner of the Literary Encylopedia Book Prize 2024 in the category 'literatures written in languages other than English'.  The book is concerned with the rich theatre tradition of the slave colony that would become the Republic of Haiti in 1804. In it, Julia draws on a range of materials and methodologies to explore the ‘mitigated spectatorship’ of the enslaved, portrayals of enslaved people in French and Creole repertoire, the contributions of enslaved people to theatre-making, and shifting attitudes during the revolutionary era.  The book demonstrates that slavery was no mere backdrop to this portion of theatre history but an integral part of its story.  It also helps recover the hidden experiences of some of the enslaved individuals who became entangled in that story.  

As part of her ongoing research, Julia Prest has put together, with support from The British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust and the University of St Andrews, a trilingual (French-English-Haitian Creole) website featuring a database of public performances of all plays, ballets and operas as documented in the local newspapers between 1764 and 1791: https://www.theatreinsaintdomingue.org. She is founder and convenor of the Colonial-Era Caribbean Theatre and Opera Network, supported by a Royal Society of Edinburgh Network Grant, and her edited volume, Colonial-Era Caribbean Theatre: Issues in Research, Writing and Methodology (Liverpool University Press, 2023) showcases their work.

Research Impact

Julia is involved in a number of collaborations that seek to bring early modern theatre to today's audiences.  She is currently working with the disability-led theatre company, Birds of Paradise, who acted as advisors for her recent translation-adaptation (via her Translating French Opera module) of Monsigny's ableist opéra-comique, Le Cadi dupé, which features a central female, disabled character.

Julia's research also formed the basis for a new theatre piece by Catherine Bisset, Placeholder (published by Salamander in 2023, winner of the Dundee Fringe Award 2024 and translated into French by Elise Finielz in 2025), which reimagines the experiences of the most famous performer of colour in Saint-Domingue, known as Minette.  Julia's critical edition of the first play known to have been written in Martinique (and performed at least twice in Saint-Domingue) – the anonymous comedy, Les Veuves créoles – formed the basis for a new adaptation of the play that premiered in Martinique in 2022, for which Julia acted as dramaturg. 

Other Research

Julia Prest wrote her PhD thesis on Molière's comedy-ballets, comparing early performances at the French court with subsequent performances in the public theatre in Paris.  Her next project culminated in her monograph, Theatre under Louis XIV: Cross-casting and the Performance of Gender in Drama, Ballet and Opera (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006; 2013).  In her second monograph, Controversy in French Drama: Molière's Tartuffe and the Struggle for Influence (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014; 2016), she changed the terms of the debate by challenging received notions regarding the opposition between the sincere believer (vrai dévot) and the hypocrite (faux dévot); she also demonstrated that Tartuffe was itself a key locus for the struggle for influence among competing political and religious factions during the early reign of Louis XIV.  

Julia Prest has co-edited (with Guy Rowlands) The Third Reign of Louis XIV, c.1682-1715 (Routledge, 2017; 2019) and (with Joseph Harris) Guilty Pleasures: Theater, Piety, and Immorality in Seventeenth-Century France (New Haven, 2016).

Teaching

Julia Prest runs the only university course dedicated to opera translation: Translating French Opera. Following its creation, she was short-listed for the Most Innovative Teacher of the Year Award 2016 by the Times Higher Education; in recognition of the course's ongoing success and development, she was awarded the British Society for Eighteenth Century Studies teaching prize in 2025.  Julia's two other honours modules within the department of French are Saint-Domingue: Theatre and Society in a Caribbean Slave Colony and Gender, Disability and Race in Early Modern French Theatre.  She also coordinates Performing Early-Modern Sexualities within the Comparative Literature programme.

French and Caribbean theatre; opera; dance; slavery and enslaved people; disability; early-modern society