Researcher Highlight: Freyja Cox Jensen and Helena Taylor

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.