Daniela Nicolaescu

Dr Daniela Nicolaescu is a researcher and multilingual writer published internationally, author of a bilingual collection titled Hyperboréen (2024, Éditions Spinelle), as well as the co-founder of the fortnightly poetry group Kerning Poetry Group (2022-2026).  

Daniela's thesis was funded by White Rose College of the Arts and Humanities. In her thesis, 'The Avant-Garde Utopias of Tzara, Isou and Luca: Language, Politics, and Multimodality', she analysed multimodal and multilingual forms of art in avant-garde production (Dada, Lettrisme and Surrealism).  

Dr Nicolaescu's thesis offers a fresh perspective on avant-garde art, looking at its utopian potential beyond its nihilistic tendencies and illuminating how avant-garde writers of Jewish origin responded to displacement, the Holocaust, nationalism and authoritarian regimes of the twentieth century. 

It does so by providing a close comparative analysis of overlooked works and archives located in Paris, produced by Tzara, Luca and Isou from three main perspectives: language, politics and multimodality. Methodologically, the thesis brings together Julia Kristeva’s concepts of the ‘semiotic’ and the ‘symbolic’, referring respectively to the pre-linguistic dimensions of language (such as rhythm and musicality) and to its structured rules (such as grammar and syntax), with Deleuze and Guattari’s distinction between ‘striated’ and ‘smooth’ space, or between controlled and hierarchical spaces and more open, fluid and affective ones.

Daniela's LAHRI project will develop their research in a more practice-based and participatory direction. She is interested in how avant-garde techniques of linguistic and multimodal experimentation might be reactivated to imagine alternative futures and challenge established ways of thinking. Her research focuses on how new forms of art can imagine better futures through immersive experiences and text, images and sounds, while addressing important topics of our century related to displacement  and political upheavals. 

Daniela plans to organise workshops using sonic and multilingual poetic collages, followed by focus groups and narrative inquiry to explore how participants experience these interventions and the alternative futures they imagine. She is particularly interested in what happens when a major language is deconstructed and reconstructed, and whether this can destabilise established modes of thinking rooted in linguistic nationalism. 

Publications:

Journal article

• Nicolaescu, D. 2026. Utopia and the Pleasure of Deviation in Isidore Isou’s Journaux des dieux. French Studies Bulletin. Liverpool University Press. [Online]. 47(2-3), pp.53-61. Available from: https://doi.org/10.3828/fsb.2026.47.2.

Interview

• Nicolaescu, D., Merabet, R, and Collins, H. 2019. An interview with Adrian Holliday. The Language Scholar. (5), pp.58-72. 

Book

• Nicolaescu, D. 2024. Hyperboréen. Paris: Maison d’édition Spinelle. ISBN: 978-2-37827-961-5. 

Book chapter 

• Nicolaescu, D. 2017. Demonul băuturii: între deliciu și supliciu [the demon of drink: between delight and agony]. In: Ionescu, E. and Iordache, R. eds. Literatura și artele: Explorări comparatiste. Bucharest: Editura Universității din București, pp. 307-317. ISBN: 978-606-16-0878-2. 

Creative works

• Nicolaescu, D. 2024. Habiter une langue. In: Sawin, W. E. et al. eds. Feux Follets: Un numéro spécial en l’honneur de David Cheramie.United States: Les Éditions Tintamarre, l’Université de Louisiane à Lafayette, ISBN: 979-8-9904203-5-9.  
• Nicolaescu, D. 2023. Weeping archives. Poetry and Audience, University of Leeds, 51(1), pp.30-31, ISSN 0032 2040.  
• Nicolaescu, D. 2022. L’insoutenable légèreté des choses. In: Bata, R. trans. Le blues roumain. Vol. 3: Anthologie implausible de poésies. Saint-Chéron: Éditions Unicité. ISBN 978-2-37355-812-8. pp.138-139.  
• Nicolaescu, D. 2022. Poetry. WRoCAH Journal. [Online]. Issue 7, pp. 83-88. White Rose College of the Art & Humanities, University of Leeds, Sheffield and York.
• Nicolaescu, D. 2022. Tres poemas. Quimera: Revista de Literatura. No. 460, April 2022, pp.44-47. Barcelona: Ediciones de Intervención Cultural, S.L. ISSN 0211-3325. Poems translated by Mario Martín Gijón.  
• Nicolaescu, D. 2021. SONDER. In: Spyrou, D. cur. C-19 LITEHOUSE: Zine for Exophonic Writers. 1st ed. Portugal, pp.30-31. Images by Lucia Spinoiu.  
• Nicolaescu, D. 2021. ‘Sfânta Parascheva’ și ‘Jurnal Porretta Terme’. CUTRA. [Online]. 
• Nicolaescu, D. 2017. Poeme compulsive [Compulsive poems]. ArTE: Revista de terapii creativ-expresive și dezvoltare personală unificatoare, 4(7), București: SPER. pp.77-81. ISSN: 2393–3305.

Conferences and presentations:

Conferences

• Lead organiser of the International Conference ‘Art Without Borders: The Avant-Garde Networks of the Twentieth Century’ (20 June 2024, University of Leeds).  

Presentations

• The Utopian Visions of Tristan Tzara, Isidore Isou and Gherasim Luca. Paper presented at the Centre for World Literatures seminar, University of Leeds, 30 April 2025.  
• Isidore Isou’s networks of extremes: the paradoxical relationship between Lettrism, technology and the Parisian intellectual scene. Paper presented at the ‘International conference Avant-garde Networks’, University of Leeds, 20 June 2024.  
• Resistance and deviations in Journaux des dieux (1950) by Isidore Isou. Paper presented at 2024 Postgraduate Conference: ‘Deviations’. Society for French Studies, King’s College London, 31 May 2024.  
• Spectral Spaces of Holocaust and Hauntings in Serge Moscovici in Mon après-guerre à Paris and Isidore Isou in L’Agrégation d’un nom et d’un messie. Paper presented at the 65th Annual Conference, University of Stirling, 1-3 July 2024.  
• Demonul băuturii: între deliciu și supliciu. Paper presented at The 11th Conference ‘Scientific Session of Comparative Literature Studies, Iconology and Ekphrasis’, University of Bucharest, 9 June 2014.

Teaching:

• Worlds of Literature seminars   
• A lecture on ‘Myth and Pu Songling's Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio’

Qualifications:

• PhD in French and Comparative Literature, University of Leeds, Supervisors: Professor Diana Holmes and Dr Gigliola Sulis. 
• Master of Arts with Distinction, Professional Language and Intercultural Studies, University of Leeds. Dissertation: Other people’s refugee problems: how Macron and Salvini discuss each other’s ‘refugee crisis’  
• Erasmus Exchange Programme Scholarship, Université de Bordeaux, France. Anthropology.  
• First Class Bachelor of Arts in French and World Literature, University of Bucharest, Dissertation: Identity dissolutions and madness in the works of Gogol and Dostoevsky. 
• Bachelor of Science, Psychology, University of Bucharest, Dissertation: Empathy in Highly Creative Individuals.

Professional memberships:

• Centre for World Literatures