Source: Krzysztof Hepner, Unsplash

Researcher Highlight: Freyja Cox Jensen and Helena Taylor

Routes is currently highlighting the diverse work conducted by our members on issues of migration, mobility and displacement. Here we feature an update from Dr Freyja Cox Jensen and Dr Helena Taylor on their recent workshop on the theme of Translation, Nation, Migration.

In June 2022, we held an exploratory workshop on the theme of Translation, Nation, Migration, bringing together colleagues from a range of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences disciplines whose work relates to the theme, with a view to finding common ground, reflecting on methodologies, and planning teaching and research collaboration. We had asked everyone to share an image and to speak to this – we heard about language in asylum court appeals; German concepts of ‘heimat’ (home’); the impact of Brexit; the Venezualan diaspora; early modern ideologies of nationhood and translation; eighteenth-century abolition movements and the working class; the anti-imperial revolutionary Ghadar Movement; diversity in contemporary UK publishing of translated literature; notions of home and identity in migration camps; multilingual London; and asylum decision-making processes in relation to LGBTQ+ communities.

This workshop was part of a project aiming to foster collaboration across disciplines and periods, on the headline themes of translation, migration and nation. We have previously held a conference with colleagues at KU Leuven, with participants from Belgium, Switzerland, the Netherlands, the US, and the UK. We are working to achieve a deeper understanding of how translation helps construct identities – regional, national or proto-national, ethnic, linguistic, and supra-national – and the ways in which linguistic and literary translations reflect the migration of people, objects, and texts around the European continent and beyond. As a result of this stimulating conference, we are planning an edited volume with the Amsterdam University Press series, ‘Language and Culture in History’, a PhD mentoring scheme, and a further network bid.

Date: 24 September 2020

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