Faculty | L'Académie de Paris Faculty

Dr Marie-Hélène Carpentier. DEUG Université de Pau et de Pays de l’Adour, MA, DEA Université de la Sorbonne-Nouvelle, MPhil New York University, PhD Université Paris VII. An experienced teacher of French Language and an accomplished academic, Marie-Hélène has taught at l’Académie de Paris for several years, as well as programs operated by Vassar-Wesleyan, Emery, Duke, Cornell, NYU, and Boston College.

Patricia Maillet. MA, DEUG Université de Paris VIII. A teacher for over 20 years, Patricia specializes in teaching cultural issues and professional writing skills at Paris’s École de la Chambre de Commerce, and giving literature courses to all levels of secondary school and university students. She is also the author of a grammar textbook used extensively in the French national curriculum, and recently published a new work, Structure and Strategy in Professional Writing.

Dr Yumna Masarwa. BA (Hons) Ben-Gurion University, Israel, MA, PhD Princeton University. A trained architect based in Paris, Yumna is currently conducting research in Islamic Archeology. Previously, she taught Islamic Art and Architecture at Princeton and worked as an archeologist for five years at the Israel Antiquities Authority.

Anna Sheftel. BA (Hons) Concordia University, MSc Oxford. Anna is a native of Montreal, Canada. She holds a BA in Linguistics and is currently a doctoral student at Oxford University, studying how popular memory records wars such as the Second World War and the conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Her research includes extensive fieldwork in Bosnia. She is the Editor of The Pestle, an Oxford journal of contemporary literature. 

Dr Jennifer Dick. BA Mt Holyoke College, MFA Colorado State University, DEA, PhD Université de Paris III. Jennifer has lived and worked in Paris for over a decade. Her latest book, Flourescence, won the 2004 Contemporary Poetry Prize from the University of Georgia Press, and she has had poems and stories published in over fifty literary magazines.

Laetitia Mariotti. BA, MA Sorbonne. An experienced French teacher, Laetitia has taught in Italy as well as her native France where she was a curriculum counselor and A-level examinations supervisor. She is an experienced actress and director, having studied for two years at the Florent acting school in Paris.

Marie Garet. BA Sorbonne, MA Ecole du Louvre. Marie Garet is a specialist in 20th-century art and the history of photography. After having done extensive work on Bulloz, an unknown photographer of the sculptor Auguste Rodin, she is now documenting the origins of the Rodin Museum.

Dr Laurent-Marie Bourcheix. BSc, DES (Pediatric Surgery), MD Université de Nantes, MSc, DEA, PhD Université de Paris V. A highly qualified and respected physician and surgeon, and a specialist in developmental physiology and genetic embryology, Laurent-Marie practices at the Hôpital Robert de Bré in Paris, which houses Europe’s busiest pediatric ER. He also serves as a Major in the French Army Reserves.

Paul Laufer. Diplôme de Recherche Plastique Université de Genève, Diplôme d’Art Visuel Université de Lausanne. Educated in Switzerland, Paul has lived and worked in Paris since 1998. A professional artist and art teacher, his studio is in an old cookie factory that our students visit.  He has taught at colleges of art in Geneva, Amsterdam, and Lausanne, and he has held exhibitions of his work in Lausanne, Amsterdam, and Paris.

Virginie Bobin. BA Université de Paris III, MA Ecole du Louvre. Through a non-profit organisation she created with friends to help and promote the work of young artists, Virginie is in touch daily with the most exciting people and places on the creative scene in Paris. She curates art shows, organizes concerts and independent fashion sales, and recently directed a play she wrote. Virginie holds degrees in Museum Studies and Art History and Cultural Mediation. This will be her fifth year with Oxbridge.

Francesca Pollock. DESS Université de Paris VII. Francesca teaches at the Ecóle de Condé in Paris, a restoration and visual arts communications school, and maintains a private practice as a clinical psychologist. Born in America, she has lived in Paris for over thirty years where she has worked as a psychoanalyst and as a translator for Les Editions Gallimard. She served as Director of the American Foundation for Contemporary Art in Paris and has developed sitcoms for television.

Leah Pollack. BFA Tufts University, DFA School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. After completing her degrees in Fine Arts and Media, Leah moved to Zürich in 1987 and then to Paris to establish her career as an artist and educator.  She teaches photography for the Skidmore, Columbia, and WICE programs in Paris, while developing her personal art in various media and exhibiting it internationally as a freelance photographer.

Claire Potter. BA (Hons) University of New South Wales, Australia. Claire is a Paris-based doctoral student and French Government Postgraduate Scholar for the University of New South Wales.  She is also studying for a DEA at the Université de Paris and is a screenwriter who is completing a screenplay, Le Monde Renversé, for the Cannes Film Festival.

Jean-Marie Schmitt. BA Bard College, MA Banaras Hindu University, India. A native of Marseille, France, Jean-Marie won the Bianca Patton Religion Prize at Bard College, and a Cultural Exchange Program Scholarship to study in India in order to perfect his knowledge of Sanskrit. He is currently completing his DPhil in Theology and teaching French at Oxford University.

Brady Wagoner. BA (Hons) Clark University, MPhil Cambridge. A Gates Scholar at Cambridge University, Brady is pursuing research in social and developmental psychology.  He has won an ORSAS Award, the prestigious Jefferson Award, the David N. Saltman Prize for Excellence in Philosophy, and an Anton Fellowship. He is the co-founder of the Cambridge University Psychological Society.

Elizabeth Weinfield. BA (Hons) Rutgers University, MMus Conservatory of Music, Brooklyn College, MSt Oxford. Elizabeth is an accomplished art historian and musicologist. She has worked as a researcher at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, specializing in French, Italian, and German paintings.  Trained at the Juilliard School, she is also a virtuoso violist who has performed for the Oxford Baroque String Quartet and continues to perform in New York City.

Heather Hartley. BA West Virginia University, MA Middlebury College. Heather has lived and worked in Paris for over five years and is the Paris Editor of Tin House Magazine. Her food and literary essays, poems, and interviews have appeared in Tin House, Los Angeles Review, Web del Sol Review of Books, Post Road, The Café Review, and elsewhere. Her poetry manuscript, Knock Knock, is currently a finalist in the National Poetry Series.

Elise Arnould. BA, MA Université de Paris VII. After getting her undergraduate degree in literature and arts, Elise spent the past year as a graduate student and a teaching assistant in the Romance Languages Department of the University of Pennsylvania. She is also a practitioner and teacher of traditional French dances as well as an amateur photographer – she has exhibited her work in Paris.

Mathieu Laarman. BA Université d’Orléans, DEA Université de Paris X. Mathieu hails from Orléans in the Loire Valley. After spending two years studying and teaching in Italy, Mathieu has been teaching literature in Paris while completing his PhD. His interests range from socio-anthropology to music, art history and philosophy.