Oxford’s French department is the biggest in Britain, with 31 permanent members of staff covering all areas of French literature and language and an intake of about 200 students a year, with an average of over 50 graduate students.
The quality and range of the department’s research has been recognised by outstanding results in the Research Assessment Exercises. In 2008 it performed better than any other French department in the UK: 65% of its research activity was graded 4* (world-leading in terms of originality, significance and rigour) or 3* (internationally excellent in terms of originality, significance and rigour).
In terms of the teaching it provides, French at Oxford was ranked top of all UK University French departments in the league tables published in the Times newspaper in May 2010. Academics in the department specialise in a wide range of fields, ranging from literature, art history, linguistics, and theory to history, film, and dance, and cover all historical periods.
The Modern European History Research Centre
The Modern European History Research Centre (MEHRC) within the History Faculty is the preeminent centre for the study of European history since the Renaissance, including France. It has research programmes with partner institutions in the USA, Norway, the Netherlands, France and Germany. The French Science Research Council currently funds a research project on Post-War Periods in Twentieth Century Europe: 1918, 1945 and 1989, which is directed from Oxford and involves 10 European partner institutions. It is supported by around 40 leading historians at Oxford.
The Voltaire Foundation
The Voltaire Foundation is a research department in the University of Oxford and a world leader for 18th-century and Enlightenment research and scholarship. Founded by the bequest of Theodore Besterman in the 1970s, its core mission was originally to research and publish the definitive, scholarly edition of the Complete Works of Voltaire (Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire).
Over the last 20 years, the Foundation has become the leading publisher of definitive critical editions of many prominent Enlightenment figures. It also produces Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century (SVEC), the foremost series devoted to Enlightenment studies. The Foundation has attracted funding from the Mellon Foundation to develop Electronic Enlightenment, which uses cutting-edge technology to make correspondence of the most significant 18th-century figures fully searchable.
The Centre is currently led by Professor Nicholas Cronk who is Professor of French Literature, and Lecturer in the History of the Book at Oxford. The Foundation has received sponsorship from the British Academy, the Centre National du Livre (CNL), Domaine de Bélesbat, the Florence Gould Foundation, and Union Académique Internationale/International Union of Academies.
British Centre for Durkheimian Studies
The British Centre for Durkheimian Studies was formed in 1991 by a group of academics, including sociologist Philippe Besnard of Paris, who wanted to form a centre for the study of Emile Durkheim, French sociologist and founder of the discipline.
The centre is housed at Oxford’s Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology (ISCA), whose library has a very good collection of books by and on Durkheim and his followers. Renowned Oxford anthropologists Professor EE Evans-Pritchard and, later, Professor Rodney Needham, as well as other teachers at ISCA, played a vital role in introducing the work of Durkheim to the English-speaking world, through translations of his work and that of some of his followers.
Libraries and Museums
Oxford’s collections hold an extensive range of French artifacts, books, manuscripts and art.
The Ashmolean’s collection of French Impressionist painting has recently been transformed by the acquisition of Edouard Manet’s Portrait of Mademoiselle Claus (1868). Sold to a private foreign buyer, the painting was judged to be of outstanding cultural importance by the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and placed under a temporary export bar by the culture minister Ed Vaisey. Under current tax legislation, this provided a British public institution with the opportunity to acquire the picture for £7.83 million – just 27% of its market value. In June, the Ashmolean launched a campaign to ‘save Manet for the public’. Following a grant of £5.9 million from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), a major grant from the Art Fund, and with support from other trusts, foundations and members of the public, the Museum succeeded, in August this year, in raising the funds to acquire the portrait. Mademoiselle Claus is an early version of Manet’s famous Le Balcon (Musée d’Orsay, Paris) and is one of the most important paintings by an Impressionist artist in this country. Exhibited in public only once before, its acquisition has, at a stroke, made Oxford into one of the leading centres for the study of Impressionist art, and is the most important single acquisition in the Ashmolean’s history.
From 2013, Portrait of Mademoiselle Claus will tour regional museums in the the UK and will feature, in January, in the Royal Academy's major exhibition, Manet: Portraying Life. The Ashmolean is
also planning a programme of educational activities, family
workshops, and public events inspired by the painting.
Oxford’s French department is the biggest in Britain, with 31 permanent members of staff covering all areas of French literature and language and an intake of about 200 students a year, with an average of over 50 graduate students. 
The Ashmolean’s collection of French Impressionist painting has recently been transformed by the acquisition of Edouard Manet’s Portrait of Mademoiselle Claus (1868). Sold to a private foreign buyer, the painting was judged to be of outstanding cultural importance by the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and placed under a temporary export bar by the culture minister Ed Vaisey. Under current tax legislation, this provided a British public institution with the opportunity to acquire the picture for £7.83 million – just 27% of its market value. In June, the Ashmolean launched a campaign to ‘save Manet for the public’. Following a grant of £5.9 million from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), a major grant from the Art Fund, and with support from other trusts, foundations and members of the public, the Museum succeeded, in August this year, in raising the funds to acquire the portrait. Mademoiselle Claus is an early version of Manet’s famous Le Balcon (Musée d’Orsay, Paris) and is one of the most important paintings by an Impressionist artist in this country. Exhibited in public only once before, its acquisition has, at a stroke, made Oxford into one of the leading centres for the study of Impressionist art, and is the most important single acquisition in the Ashmolean’s history.