James R. Lawler

James Ronald Lawler FAHA (1929–2013) was the foundation professor of French studies at the University of Western Australia (1963-1971) and later the Edward Carson Waller Distinguished Service Professor in Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Chicago.

[4] He undertook research for a doctorate at the Sorbonne in Paris, France, which he successfully completed in 1954 with a "mention très honorable" for his thesis, Style et Poétique chez Guillaume Apollinaire.

According to Wallace Kirsop, Lawler was for more than fifty years "one of the most distinguished representatives of a remarkable group of [Australian] students of French poetry from Baudelaire to Valéry".

[9] Previous students and colleagues remember him as an "inspirational teacher" and as a "mentor" who set other academics on the "path to a career in French".

She worked alongside him at the University of Western Australia and played a major role in establishing the French civilisation courses there.