Leo Tidmarsh (he/him) received his BA in French and Arabic from the University of Oxford in 2024. His dissertation there was entitled 'Resistance to political incarceration during the "Years of Lead": Writing the body and temporality in Youssef Fadel and Abdellatif Laâbi,' in which he employed close reading and elements of queer theory in analysing the ways in which Moroccan authors, writing in French and Arabic, presented non-normative images of temporalities and corporealities to challenge state oppression.
Throughout his studies, Leo has taken an interest in modern Francophone and French literature, particularly in the 20th century, focussing on texts by Algerian, Moroccan, and Caribbean authors reacting to violence, both present and historical, and looking at the ways in which such acts of violence have been imagined and presented differently across various forms. Leo is looking to continue to expose tactics of resistance in carceral texts written in French and Arabic across North Africa and the Arab world, putting to use both queer and feminist lenses.
Leo has also taken interest in pre-modern Arabic literature, particularly that representing same-sex desire in the medieval Arabic-speaking world. He has spent a year studying at the Institut Français du Proche Orient in Amman, Jordan, and has volunteered in Calais, working with children and families on the move.