PhD Affiliates with BCLT
NOZOMI ABE is a PhD candidate in Literary Translation at the University of East Anglia
researching ‘Japanese Translationese as a Theatrical Language’. She holds an MFA in
Creative Writing from Queen Margaret University College and an MSc in Translation Studies
from the University of Edinburgh. She worked as a researcher for the Japanese Government
Overseas Study Programme for Artists (2008-2010) and since 2006 she has been working as
a theatre translator/dramaturg for Studio Life Theatre Company Tokyo collaborating with
British artists. Her recent dramaturgical work with Phantom was produced in 2011. Her
translations include As You Desire Me (Theatre X, Tokyo 2008), The Orphan Muses (Theatre
X, Tokyo 2007) Mary Stuart (New National Theatre, Tokyo 2006) and her original plays,
Love Seat Sofa (2005) and Tristan and Mr Poppins (2004) have been performed at Edinburgh
Fringe. She is interested in meeting people who are passionate about poetry, music and
drama.
SAM COOPER is a PhD student at the University of Sussex. His thesis, ‘“A Lot to Answer
For”: The English legacy of the Situationist International’, traces the English reception of the
European avant-garde group the Situationist International (1957-1972), in order to reflect on
the Anglicisation of Continental aesthetics and avant-garde traditions throughout the
twentieth century. Sam is interested in Anglicisation as a form of cultural and literal
translation, and as a mode of production of new aesthetic formations. His interest in the
BCLT is to connect with people whose work surveys the same Anglo-Franco (or AngloContinental), or whose work might methodologically inform (and be informed by) this work.
Sam’s departmental webpage is available at:
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/english/internal/people/peoplelists/person/208084’
SOPHIE BISSET is currently completing a PhD at the Sussex Centre for Intellectual
History, University of Sussex, on the natural law theory of the Huguenot scholar and
translator Jean Barbeyrac (1674-1744). Sophie’s research focuses on Barbeyrac’s thought in
distinction from that of his authors, arguing that in the considerable notes that accompany his
translations – and in his independent scholarly works – he adapted and synthesized the ideas
of others to develop his own theory of natural law. She is particularly interested in the
transformation and diffusion of ideas across different intellectual and cultural contexts, both
through the medium of translation and through the adaptation of ideas to shifting moral,
religious and political circumstances. In addition, she is keen to explore issues relevant to
researchers whose study requires them to engage in textual translation as part of their studies.
Her departmental webpage is available here:
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/history/people/peoplelists/person/147327
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J. SEBASTIAN BROWNE is working towards a PhD on the Spanish Civil War at the
School of History, University of Kent. He is also translating (from Spanish) the memoirs of
a village girl from Southern Spain (the same village he lived in between 1972-1975). The
book tells the story of this village girl, born in 1922, from her childhood through to 1939. He
is translating the second edition which has a foreword by Felipe González Márquez, Prime
Minister of Spain from 1982-1996. It is a straightforward account, told in a straightforward
manner, which deals with the joys and hardships of her childhood, but also with the trauma of
war, exile, and return home via an Algerian concentration camp in September 1939.
THIRTHANKAR CHAKRABORTY completed an MA in Twentieth Century Literary
Studies at Durham University and is now working towards a PhD on “The Reception of
Samuel Beckett in India” at the University of Kent. As part of his research he intends to look
into various translations and adaptations of Samuel Beckett into Indian languages (Hindi,
Bengali, Malayalam, etc.), while comparing and contrasting them to his own self-translated
texts, French to English and vice versa. By doing so, he hopes to analyse possible paradigm
shifts of key concepts in reading Beckett from a cross-cultural point of view, and to establish
the significant impact the author and playwright has created in India. The conclusion would
be an attempt to bridge the Orientalist “Other” with continental philosophy that has been
firmly rooted in and around Beckett’s oeuvre. He hopes the BCLT can support and guide him
with some of his endeavours.
KATE DE RYCKER, http://www.teemeurope.eu/students/De%20Rycker.html, has a BA in
English Literature from Jesus College, Oxford and a MA in Shakespeare Studies from King’s
College London. She is currently studying for a PhD in English Literature, as part of the
interdisciplinary TEEME research project, funded by an Erasmus Mundus scholarship, and
studying at the Universities of Kent and Porto. Her research is on the reputation and
reception of the Italian writer Pietro Aretino in Elizabethan England, especially by the
‘English Aretine’, Thomas Nashe. Kate is currently working on how Aretino’s writing and
anti-Italian sentiment circulated through French translations, English publication by
collaboration between Italian and English printers and editors, and the resultant Aretine
‘persona’ that was re-created by Elizabethan writers. She is interested in interdisciplinary
studies, especially in the connections between literary and translation studies, theatre history
and the history of the book.
MOIRA EAGLING is studying part-time for a PhD in literary translation at UEA, having
completed her Masters at the same institution in September 2010. She is a native English
speaker with French as her second language. Moira’s particular area of interest lies in cultural
translation, and her research project is about issues arising from translating bilingual texts,
specifically in French Canadian fiction. She is also interested in translating for the theatre;
translating minority languages such as Provençal and Monégasque; and translating previously
untranslated and/or contemporary texts, especially short stories; as well as, in a broad sense,
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the development of literary translation as an academic subject and a profession. In her other
life Moira runs a small Norwich-based company providing specialist services to the
publishing industry, including editorial research, copywriting, proof-reading, copy editing,
indexing, design, artwork, subbing, pre-press production and print buying.
ANTOINETTE FAWCETT is a PhD researcher at the University of East Anglia. After a
career teaching English Language and Literature, World Literature, and Drama in several
countries, she returned to the UK and completed an MA in Literary Translation at UEA in
2007, receiving a Distinction. She is currently translating the poetry of the Dutch poets
Martinus Nijhoff and Gerrit Achterberg and working on her doctoral thesis Translating the
Form: A Process-based Approach to Translating the Poems of Martinus Nijhoff (1894-1953)
and Gerrit Achterberg (1905-1962). She was 3rd prize-winner in the international 2010 John
Dryden Translation Competition for her translation of Nijhoff’s verse-drama Lord Halewyn
and won the 2nd prize in the 2009 Keats-Shelley for her poem ‘Where places exist’.
Publications include poems and translations in many magazines and journals and
Translation: Theory and Practice in Dialogue (Continuum 2010), co-edited with Karla
Guadarrama García and Rebecca Hyde Parker. She has been the editor of the Norman
Nicholson Society’s newsletter Comet since the foundation of the Society in 2006. Her
research interests include the use of Think-Aloud Protocols in the translation of poetry, the
use of memory techniques in the translation of poetry, translation and creativity, rhythm and
metre, Modernism, and twentieth-century poetry.
LINA FISHER received a BA(Hons) in Modern European Languages from the University of
Liverpool and an MA in Literary Translation from the University of East Anglia, where she
is currently doing a PhD on the translations of Austrian writer Ingeborg Bachmann’s
‘Todesarten’ texts. Her research is motivated by an interest in feminism and sociolinguistics,
and asks whether it is possible to detect markers of the translators’ ideology in the target
texts, as well as how the comparison of source and target texts can enhance our interpretation
of the source texts. These questions are explored through cognitive stylistic analysis and
investigation of journalistic and scholarly reception of source and target texts. Lina is
undertaking an internship at the BCLT during the autumn semester 2012.
LOIUSE FRYER is a PhD student in the Psychology Department at Goldsmiths. Her
research is in the area of Audio Description (AD) - the practice of adding a commentary to
plays / films / TV to make them accessible to people who are blind or partially sighted.
Although not a form of literary translation, AD fits into the area of Audio Visual Translation
(AVT) as it translates the visual code into a verbal one. Her studies explore how the blind
audience receive information, both verbally and through non-visual modalities such as touch
and non-verbal sound. Loiuse has worked as an Audio Describer for the National Theatre
since it began its service in 1993. She was the BBC's describer for the Audetel project,
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piloting AD for television in the mid-90s. She has trained stage and screen describers in the
UK and Australia. She also works with gallery assistants and curators on ways of making
their collections more accessible for blind and partially sighted visitors. Loiuse has had
several papers published on the subject of AD, in both Translation and Psychology journals,
and has spoken at conferences in Berlin, Barcelona and Granada as well as the UK. She is
currently a Visiting Lecturer in AVT at City University and Imperial College, University of
London, as well as a regular broadcaster for BBC Radio 3.
As a French native, TANGUY HARMA studied literary translation and traductology at the
Université Charles de Gaulle Lille 3, France, on a post-graduate programme (Maitrise) in
2007. This course in particular made Tanguy aware of the extent and diversity of the issues at
stake in literary translation: the thesis was concerned with the translation of a chapter of a
book ("Riding the magic Carpet", Tom Anderson, 2006) from English into French, dealing
with the account of a surf trip to Indonesia. The first part of Tanguy’s work was composed of
a reflection on the issues encountered in the translation process, and the second part was a
proposal of a translated version of this chapter. Since then, this experience of reflection on
and practice of literary translation has made Tanguy even more curious and engaged in this
domain. Now as a PhD student in American literature at Goldsmiths, UoL, Tanguy is ever
conscious of the discipline of literary translation, and is looking for further professional
opportunities, mainly from English into French.
TERI HILL is a fourth year PhD/Research student in the Literature Department of the
University of Essex, where she is also a GTA. The title of her thesis is 'From Me to You: A
comparative study of self-recreation in the works and lives of Alexandre Dumas and F. Scott
Fitzgerald, focusing on The Count of Monte Cristo and The Great Gatsby.' This is a
comparative study looking at how Dumas and Fitzgerald recreated their selves and how this
need for self-recreation was written into and expressed through the characters of Dantès and
Gatsby. It considers how one mode of self-change can be applied to two people from
different countries, periods, races, who also wrote in different languages. Teri is interested in
becoming an Affiliate of BCLT as she would like to be kept updated on comparative
works/studies and more specifically, she would liaise with other students working in the field
of translating and adapting psychoanalytical considerations of the self into literary works (e.g.
considering the authors through the characters that they created).
ALIA’ KAWALIT was born in Amman, Jordan. She moved to the UK in 2005 and did her
MA in the University of Sheffield. Her dissertation was on the usage of symbolism in three
languages (English, French and Arabic) by referring to the poetry of T.S. Eliot, Charles
Baudelaire, and Badr Shaker as-Sayyab. She is currently working on her PhD in creative
writing at the University of Kent, under the supervision of Prof. Janet Montefiore and Prof
David Herd. Ms Kawalit has worked as a university language lecturer of both English and
Arabic in Jordan and England. At the age of 15, she won a literary prize from the Spanish
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Institute, Cervantes, for reciting poetry written by Federica Garcia Lorca. Some years later,
she had her work published in Petra Voice and in Sheffield University Magazine Route 57.
Also, she recently contributed in the anthology Best of Manchester Poets, volume 2. Ms
Kawalit participates in various poetry readings and is a member of Manchester’s poetry
group Poetica and London’s literary organisation Exiled Writers Ink.
SZE WAH SARAH LEE is a second year PhD student at the Department of English and
Comparative Literature at Goldsmiths College, supervised by Dr Andreas Kramer. She
received her MA in English Literature from the University of Leeds in 2011. Based on her
interest in European languages and visual art, her dissertation explores the influences of the
European Avant-garde on Imagism and Vorticism, two Anglo-American artistic movements
before WWI. By considering the verbal as well as non-verbal influences from the Continent
(including poetry, visual art, aesthetics and philosophy), her project gauges the
interdisciplinary aspects and international aspirations of these movements, thus expanding the
current understanding and scope of study. Sarah has presented her research at various
conferences, with an upcoming presentation at the MLA Annual Convention 2013. She has
received bilingual education prior to her studies in England, and is currently a freelance
translator and proof-reader in Chinese and English.
LYNN MASTELLOTTO received a BA and MA in English Literature from McGill
University (Montréal, Canada) and a PGCE in English and French from Oxford University.
She has worked as an educator, translator, and editor for over fifteen years, with an interest in
understanding the complex identities and identifications that arise through dialogue across
national, cultural and disciplinary boundaries. Her doctoral thesis at UEA focuses on the
construction of self and place in contemporary relocation narratives, an emerging subgenre of
travel memoir linked to lifestyle migration. Questioning how writing produces knowledge
about self and other, her research focuses on home-abroad memoirs by transnational writers
and their autobiographical accounts of the good life 'Made in Italy'. Addressing the modes
and strategies through which local culture is discursively reproduced or ‘translated’ for
imaginative consumption by global readers, her analysis proposes a re-thinking of
cosmopolitanism and the rhetorical strategies for cultural representation. As a transplanted
Canadian living in Italy and studying in the UK, her project is motivated by both personal
and academic interest in complex patterns of global migration and place attachment in the
contemporary period, and how these are changing traditional concepts of home/away,
local/foreigner, and everyday/holiday.
BECKA MCFADDEN is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Theatre and Performance at
Goldsmiths, University of London. Her research concerns the practice of contemporary
Czech new theatre, specifically the work of Farma v jeskyni (Farm in the Cave). In
connection with her research, she is engaged in on-going translation of Czech texts. To date,
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these have been primarily of a scholarly nature, but she is extremely interested in exploring
the translation of Czech plays into English. Beyond the specific remit of her PhD thesis, her
practical theatre work has a strong emphasis on translation. Becka is currently an associate
artist of LegalAliens International Theatre Company, for which she has recently directed the
English language premiere of Sergio Pierattini's The Return (Il Ritorno) at the Etcetera
Theatre, a playtext she assisted in translating. In summer 2012, she performed in and
contributed dramaturgically (working between Czech and English texts) to Parrabbola's
community play production of The Winter's Tale for Shakespeare festivals in Ostrava, Czech
Republic and Gdansk, Poland. She is currently collaborating with a London-based Czech
dramaturg on an oral history/performance project exploring different waves of Czech
immigrants in London, with the aim of producing Czech and English performance texts.
KEVIN W. MOLIN is currently researching for a PhD at the Centre for Cultural Studies at
Goldsmiths, University of London. His research is focused on dissensual reconfigurations,
school taxonomies and historiographies, and a critique of systemic pedagogies. A large part
of the research constitutes an inquiry into contested battlegrounds of language, the
disagreements emergent from mistranslations, the implications and connotations of using one
term or another, and the possibilities opened up by tracking the etymological ‘career’ of a
word, perhaps in the sense suggested in Raymond Williams’ Keywords. Kevin is mostly
interested in analysing terms that are used nonchalantly within education, often imported
from militaristic, corporate or scientific lexicons, and he is intrigued by the creative and
interventionist potentials of aberrant forms of language, such as alloglossia, idiolects and
pidgin. Besides his PhD research, Kevin is also working on several literary translation
projects from Italian to English, and vice versa.
MAJELLA MUNRO is currently completing a PhD thesis on the Surrealist movement in
Japan at the University of Essex. This thesis examines the reception of non-Western avantgardes in Europe, and argues that the international dissemination of Surrealist literary
influence was dependent on Francophonie. Her thesis presents a number of previously
unpublished and untranslated Japanese Surrealist texts in English translation for the first time.
She is interested in the relationship between translation and influence in the international
dissemination of avant-gardism during the early twentieth century. Her next research project,
on the progressive Japanese literary group the Shinkankakuha, will continue to examine the
impact of French literature and its translations on the development of modernism in Japan.
ERSIN MÜNÜKLÜ is a PhD-Student in Modern German and Comparative Literature at the
University of Kent. In 2010, he did his MA, with a dissertation on 'The Individual and the
Modern City: Prosaic and Lyrical Depictions of the City from Baudelaire to Joyce'. In his
doctoral research at the University of Kent, Ersin is focusing on the depictions of 'post6
societies' in Europe, Turkey, and Africa, which, against the background of European history
and culture, have experienced a radical change in the twenty-first century. The new
containment of societies and countries has had a massive influence on the construction of
identity, and has put the focus increasingly on the differences between 'Us' and 'Them'.
Ersin’s research interests fall within the fields of European history, culture, and literature. He
is particularly interested in depictions of societies in the European post-war era in terms of
displaced pasts and blocked memories, as well as in the contrast between European culture
and the melancholic legacy of Ottoman history in modern Turkey and Turkish Literature.
SUZANNE NOLAN is a PhD student and GTA at the University of Essex. Having studied
her BA in History and MA in Pre-Columbian Art and Architecture there, she embarked on
her PhD in 2009. Her thesis is a detailed epigraphic and iconographic analysis of
hieroglyphic stairway 2, at Yaxchilan, in Mexico. In it, she explores the ancient Maya
language through translation and critical investigation, and seeks to develop a deeper
understanding of late-Classic Maya (600-900 A.D.) political and religious culture. Suzanne
has become an affiliate PhD for the BCLT in order to engage with the wider literary
translation community. She hopes that her involvement with the Centre will help re-stimulate
interest and discussion of the ancient Maya, and their language, within the UK, and
encourage renewed scholarship within the area.
LOUISE ØHRSTRØM is currently doing a PhD in Literature at UEA on the medieval
writer Julian of Norwich, focusing on metaphor and emotion. She has her MA in
Comparative Literature from University of Copenhagen, Denmark and University of Guelph,
Canada. Prior to coming to UEA, she has worked as a journalist and translator and has taught
at Folkeuniversitetet in Copenhagen. In 2010 she finished her translation of Julian of
Norwich's Showing of Love from Middle English into Danish which was published by
Forlaget Boedal. Earlier in 2010 Louise's first novel, Efter Rosinen, was published by EC
Edition for which she received Munch-Christensens Kulturlegat (Danish debutant prize) in
September 2010.
THEODOROS RAKAPOULOS is a doctoral student at Goldsmiths, University of
London, in the department of Anthropology. As an anthropologist, he has conducted 18
months of ethnographic fieldwork in Sicily. Ethnography implies largely a process of
translation, understood in two terms: from one language into another, and from one cultural
world into another (what anthropologists call the etic and the emic, a bridge between
theoretical analysis and local knowledge). In my case, this process involved Italian and
English - both not my original languages. As a writer, he has been involved in literary
translation, again in a twofold way: on the one hand, parts of his own work have been
translated (and published in reviews and magazines) from Greek into seven languages
(English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Romanian and Serbian), following the
success of his first poetry collection (Greek state prize for debut writer, 2011). On the other,
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he himself has translated and published poetry of British poets such as Roger McGough,
Wendy Cope, Philip Larkin, and Italian poets, such as Nanni Balestrini and Ignazio Buttitta.
MARY REDFERN deals with translation at a very practical level day to day, through the
reading of Japanese language and translated sources. Having worked as an Assistant Curator
for East Asian collections at the National Museum of Scotland, the Victoria and Albert
Museum and Bristol’s City Museum and Art Gallery, Mary has joined the School of World
Art Studies and Museology at the University of East Anglia to undertake a PhD with
funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Building upon long-held interests in
the varying ways in which material objects are reconstrued in new cultural contexts, her
research focuses on the appropriation of western-style tableware in Japan from 1868 until
1940. By examining why and how individuals chose to use western-style tableware in
contexts ranging from diplomatic dinners to department stores, this research aims to reveal
the part played by western-style tableware in the creation of new identities of class and status
during a time of great cultural change.
NESREEN SALEM is currently doing research towards a PhD in Creative Writing at the
University of Essex, focussing on Alf Layla Wa Layla (A Thousand and One Nights),
exploring the historical, social and political role of the storyteller in medieval Arabia as well
as postmodern and postcolonial literature.
ALEX VALENTE is a current PhD student at UEA, where he also did his MA in Literary
Translation. His thesis ‘Myths, Mutants and Superducks: Exporting Italian Comics’ looks at
translation strategies for comics, focusing on Italian and other non-Anglo-American
publications. During his MA, he was an intern for Arc Publications, and is currently interning
for the John Dryden Translation Competition. The BCLT has been especially useful during
his MA, in both the use of its library and the opportunities offered during Summer School,
which encouraged his language learning tendencies. He has published a number of poems and
short stories in both English and Italian publications.
PHILIP WILSON is currently researching the relevance of the philosopher Ludwig
Wittgenstein to literary translation, at the University of East Anglia, where he completed the
MA in Literary Translation after a career teaching Modern Foreign Languages in
comprehensive schools. Research interests include: the relevance of philosophy to translation
studies; the historical novel; relocation. He has translated Luther's Breviary (Wartburg Press,
with John Gledhill), a selection of readings from Martin Luther, and Alexander Neville's
Latin history of Norwich, Norwicus (forthcoming). He has published many poems in literary
magazines, including translations of Baudelaire, Deguy, Goethe and Nerval, and a chapbook
of poetry, Blessed and unbroken by the fall (Ninth Arrondissement Press). Currently he is
translating Das Lächeln der Fortuna by Rebecca Gablé and intends to work as a literary
translator on attaining his doctorate.
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PEI YUN is studying as a PhD candidate at University of Sussex. Her research will involve
a comparative reading of Wordsworth and Chinese ancient thinker, Zhuangzi, and will
include English translations of some key texts of Zhuangzi. Although not an experienced
translator, Yun has published a translated version of an American novel, Hot Lights, Cold
Steel (from English to Chinese, Beijing: Huawen Publishing House, 2010). She has also taken
part in the translation of The Cambridge History of American Literature, Vol. 5 (Beijing:
Central Compilation & Translation Press, 2010) and has two translated works forthcoming
(The Council of Dads and The Pocket Parents).
WAN ZHAOYUAN is associate professor in Translation Studies at School of Foreign
Languages, Lanzhou Jiaotong University, China; he won first-prize in the 23rd National
Translation Contest - Han Suyin Award, 2011; he is the author of a few significant papers on
translation published in top Chinese journals like Chinese Translators Journal, Shanghai
Journal of Translators and World Religions Studies; and a translator or co-translator of nine
books published in China, including In Search of Meaning (Social Sciences Academic Press,
2010), Newton: A Very Short Introduction (Yilin Publisher, 2009), Creating a New Mind
(New Millennium Publisher International, 2007). He is currently a PhD candidate in the
History Department of the University of Sussex, researching on the Science-Religion
relations in China over the past two centuries.
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