Jan Borm, (* 23 Octobre 1964), born in Kiel, Germany, is Full Professor of English literature at the University of Versailles/Paris-Saclay and an internationally known specialist of travel literature in English, French and German with a particular focus on the Arctic. He is also UARCTIC Chair in Arctic Humanities.

EDUCATION Jan Borm graduated in English Studies from the Institut d’anglais Charles V at Université Paris VII Denis-Diderot in 1991. He defended his Phd dissertation on the contemporary British travel book supervised by Professor Marie-Françoise Cachin at Université Paris VII in 1997. In 2004, he defended his Habilitation to direct Research on the poetics of travel literature under the guidance of Professor Jean Vivies at the University of Provence in Aix-en-Provence.

ACADEMIC CAREER Jan Borm started teaching as an Assistant-Moniteur (Assistant Professor) at the University of Picardie Jules-Verne in Amiens in 1992 as a recipient of a PhD scholarship from the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research. In 1998, he was appointed Lecturer in British Literature (Maître de conferences/Associate Professor) at the University of Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ). In 2005, he was appointed Full Professor in British Literature at the same university where he has notably served as Head of the English Department and Vice-President in charge of International Relations (2016-2024).

  In 2009, he founded the research centre CEARC together with Prof. Jean Malaurie (1922-2024) at UVSQ and in 2010 the interdisciplinary Master2 programme “Arctic Studies” entirely taught in English, offering classes in Environment Science (atmosphere physics, climatology and meteorology) and the Humanities (anthropology, cultural and literary studies as well as history and politics). Since 2015, the programme has been affiliated with the University Paris-Saclay, France’s leading research-intensive university that UVSQ is a founding and associate member of.
  In 2020, he founded the Malaurie Institute of Arctic Research Monaco-UVSQ (MIARC) that he is director of since its creation (website: miarctic.org). The Malaurie Institute was created at UVSQ to perform research on and participate in the scientific valorisation of Jean Malaurie’s Arctic collection which he donated to the Oceanographic Institute/Prince Albert I of Monaco Foundation in, 2022.
  In 2022, Jan Borm was appointed UArctic Chair in Arctic Humanities for a five-year period.

RESEARCH Jan Borm has published widely on travel writing in English, French and German, notably about the Arctic. He is the author of the portrait Jean Malaurie, un homme singulier (Paris, éditions du Chêne, 2005) and has co-edited Bruce Chatwin’s posthumous collection Anatomy of Restlessness (London, Jonathan Cape, 1996), as well fifteen collective volumes including the special number dedicated to Jean Malaurie of the prestigious French Cahier de l’Herne series, published in 2021. Jan Borm is an active contributor to international journals and regularly peer-reviews contributions for international reviews and academic publishers. He is editor-in-chief of the journal Inter-Nord, founded by Jean Malaurie and Fernand Braudel in the 1960s, published since 2023 online and in free-access mode at miarctic.org Jan Borm is also in charge of the series “Arctic Humanities” at Brill Publishers (Leiden, Boston).

HONOURS AND AWARDS Jan Borm received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Lapland at Rovaniemi, Finland, in 2019. He was appointed Honorary Professor at Poltava National Pedagogical University, Ukraine, in 2022. In 2021, he was received in the order of the Palmes Académiques as “Chevalier” and in July 2023 also as “Chevalier” in the order of the Légion d’honneur. The insignia of this order were presented to him by the French Minister of Higher Education and Research Sylvie Retailleau at the Ministry of Higher Education and Research in February 2024.

Personal page at MIARC

PUBLICATIONS (SELECTION) Jan Borm, Jean Malaurie, un homme singulier. Paris : Éditions du Chêne, 2005, 192p. Co-edited volumes: • Jan Borm and Matthew Graves (eds.), Bruce Chatwin, Anatomy of Restlessness (London : Jonathan Cape, 1996 ; paberback edition : London, Picador, 1997) • “Récits de voyage”, Jean Viviès and Jan Borm (eds.), e-rea, revue en ligne d‘études anglophones de l‘Université de Provence (www.e-rea.org), numéro 3.1., printemps 2005, (ISSN 1638-1718) • Jan Borm, Bernard Cottret et Jean-François Zorn (eds.), Convertir/Se Convertir : regards croisés sur l‘histoire des missions chrétiennes. Paris : Nolin, 2006, 202p. • Jan Borm, Bernard Cottret et Mark Münzel (eds.), Christentum und der Natürliche Mensch, Beiträge zur französisch-deutschen Tagung “Christianisme et l‘homme naturel“ (Journée d‘études, Marburg, Januar 2007). Marburg: Förderverein “Völkerkunde in Marburg“ e.V., coll. “Curupira Workshop“, vol. 13, 2010, 171p. • Jan Borm, Bernard et Monique Cottret (eds.), Savoir et pouvoir au siècle des Lumières, colloque de Versailles et Potsdam, 2007-2008. Paris : éditions de Paris, 2011, 250p. • Jan Borm and Benjamin Colbert (eds.), Foreign Correspondence. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014, 233p. • Jan Borm and Daniel Chartier (eds.), Le froid. Adaptation, production, effets, représentations. Montréal : Presses de l’Université du Québec, coll. “Droit au Pôle”, 2018, 365p. • Jan Borm and Joanna Kodzik (eds.), German Representations of the Far North (17th-19th centuries): Writing the Arctic, With a Preface by Jean Malaurie, Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholar Publishing, 2020, 276p. (paperback edition : Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholar Publishing, 2023) • Pierre Aurégan and Jan Borm (eds.), Cahier Jean Malaurie, Paris : Éditions de l’Herne, 2021, 272p. • Jan Borm and Christophe Tournu (eds.), Vivre et communiquer sa foi à l’époque moderne : confessionnalisations, réveils et récits de vie – Hommage à Bernard Cottret, Paris: Éditions Kimé, 2023 • Jan Borm and Pierre Aurégan (eds.) + Jan Borm (in charge of iconography), Jean Malaurie, De la pierre à l’âme. Mémoires, Paris: Plon, coll. « Terre Humaine », 2022 (éd. de poche, 2023) • Jan Borm (ed.), Inter-Nord no. 22, 2023, 165p. open access: https://miarctic.org/images/publications/Inter-Nord/Inter-Nord_22.pdf, ISSN: 2971-1487 • Jan Borm, Joanna Kodzik and Axel E. Walter (eds.), Representations of the West Nordic Isles: Greenland – Iceland – Faroe Islands. Kiel: Wachholtz Verlag, 2023, 305p. Articles • “In-Betweeners? -- On the Travel Book and Ethnography“, in Studies in Travel Writing, 4, Nottingham : 2000, pp. 78-105 • “Jean Malaurie -- An Interview Conducted and Translated by Jan Borm“, in Studies in Travel Writing, 5, Nottingham : 2001, pp. 106-129 • ”Discourses of Nordicity in Vilhjalmur Stefansson’s My Life with the Eskimo (1913)”, in Waldemar Zacharasiewicz (ed.), Riding/Writing Across Borders in North American Travelogues and Fiction. Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2011, pp. 307-318 • “Defining Travel: On the Travel Book, Travel Writing and Terminology”, in Tim Youngs and Charles Forsdick (eds.), Travel Writing. London, Routledge, Series: “Critical Concepts in Literary and Cultural Studies”, 2012, vol. IV « Approaches to travel », pp.; reprint of an essay first published in in Glenn Hooper and Tim Youngs (eds.), Perspectives on Travel Writing (Ashgate, 2004), pp. 13–26 • “Discovery as Cheerful Endurance: William Edward Parry’s Quest (1819-25)”, in Frédéric Regard (ed.), Arctic Exploration in the Nineteenth Century: Discovering the Northwest Passage. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2013, pp. 137-153 • “The Rhetorics of Arctic Discourse: Reading Gretel Ehrlich’s This Cold Heaven in Class”, in Corinne Fowler, Charles Forsdick, Ludmila Kostova (eds.), Travel and Ethics: Theory and Practice, London, Routledge, 2014, 268p., pp. 216-230. • “Greenland as seen by two contemporary British travellers: Joanna Kavenna and Gavin Francis”, Studies in Travel Writing, vol. 20, 2016, issue 3: “New Narratives of the Arctic”, pp. 262-271. • “‘Lavish Lapland’: Gender, Primitivism and the Pictorial in Olive Murray Chapman’s Travelogue Across Lapland”, in Heidi Hansson and Anka Ryall (eds.), Arctic Modernities: The Environmental, the Exotic and the Everyday, Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017, pp. 158-172.

• “The French of the Tundra. Early modern European views of the Tungus in translation”, in Études mongoles et sibériennes, centrasiatiques et tibétaines, [en ligne/online], 49 | 2018, mise en ligne le 20 décembre 2018/uploaded 20 December 2018. • “Johann Miertsching’s Arctic Diary (1850-1854)”, in Jan Borm et Joanna Kodzik (sous la direction de), German Representations of the Far North (17th-19th centuries): Writing the Arctic, With a Preface by Jean Malaurie, Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholar Publishing, 2020, pp. 130-148. • “Lapland Under French Eyes: the second La Recherche expedition (1838-1839) narrated by Xavier Marmier”, in Arctic & Antarctic International Journal for Circumpolar Socio-Cultural Issues, vol. 14, 2020, 47-77. • “‘To seek out these poor sheep wandering in a land of darkness’ – Hans Egede in English, French and German texts from the 18th century until today”, in Aage Rydstrøm-Poulsen, Gitte Adler Reimer et Annemette Nyborg Lauritsen (sous la direction de), Tro og samfund i Grønland i 300-året for Hans Egedes ankomst, Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 2021, 343-357. • “‘This island so sad and beautiful’ – Iceland seen by the French expedition La Recherche in the 1830s – from scientific observation to cultural representation”, in Jan Borm, Joanna Kodzik and Axel E. Walter (eds.), Representations of the West Nordic Isles: Greenland – Iceland – Faroe Islands. Kiel: Wachholtz Verlag, 2023, 173-203.

Co-authored articles • Jan Borm and Inge Seiding, “La période colonial vue à travers les archives (XVIIIème-XIXème siècles)”, in Valérie Masson-Delmotte, Émilie Gauthier, David Grémillet, Jean-Michel Huctin et Didier Swingedouw (eds.), Groenland : Climat, écologie, société, Paris : CNRS Éditions, 2016, pp. 214-218. • Jan Borm and Joanna Kodzik, “Introduction: Imagining and Representing the Arctic in German”, in Jan Borm et Joanna Kodzik (sous la direction de), German Representations of the Far North (17th-19th centuries): Writing the Arctic, With a Preface by Jean Malaurie, Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholar Publishing, 2020, pp. 1-43. • Borm, J., Kodzik, J., & Charbit, S. (2021). Producing and communicating natural history in the long 18th century: Moravian observations concerning Greenland’s climate in unpublished sources. Polar Record, 57, E23. • Jan Borm and Bergur Djurhuus Hansen, “The Faroe Islands visited by the French expedition ‘La Recherche’ in 1839. A presentation and discussion of the Faroese chapter of Xavier Marmier’s official account”, Fróðskaparrit - Faroese Scientific Journal, 2022, vol. 68 (2022), pp. 5-34.