Staff in Modern Languages

A native of Barcelona, I studied Hispanic Philology and completed the doctorate courses in Catalan Philology at the University of Barcelona. I arrived at the University of Birmingham in 2001 where I completed my doctoral thesis entitled ‘Intertextual dynamics in Gabriel Ferrater’s work: the role of English poetry’. I taught all levels of Catalan Language and content modules ...

Professor Helen Abbott is a Professor of Modern Languages, and an arts and humanities advocate with a finance background. Her research into the phonopolitics of modern French poetry and music has been supported by grants from the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy, and the Leverhulme Trust. She is currently an Advisory Board member of the Arts and Humanities Research ...

Dr Caroline Ardrey is a lecturer in French, specialising in nineteenth-century French poetry and its interaction with other art forms and media, in particular music and fashion.

As a researcher, Caroline is Senior Research Associate on The Baudelaire Song Project, directed by Professor Helen Abbottwith Research Associate Dr Nina Rolland. As part of this work, Caroline specialises in ...

Noha Attia is a Teaching Fellow in Arabic Language at the Department of Modern Languages and the Arabic Language Coordinator at languages for All. She started her teaching career at the Arabic Language Institute at the American University in Cairo (AUC) where she taught Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and Egyptian Colloquial Arabic to learners of different levels of proficiency. Following that, she ...

I am a Lecturer in Translation Studies at the University of Birmingham and I teach across the provision of core and optional modules for the MA programme in Translation Studies. My research interests revolve around Italian-Canadian writing and its translation into Italian and around the role of translation in Italian queer feminist activism. In addition to teaching, I have been working as a ...

I was appointed to the University of Birmingham in 1995. My main areas of interest are all aspects of contemporary French politics and society.

Following undergraduate and postgraduate study at the University of Birmingham, I was appointed to the position of Teaching Fellow in French Studies in September 2011. My specialism is in 20th-century literature and French theatre from the 17th-century onwards.

I joined the Department of Modern Languages in 2011 and teach in Translation Studies and German. I am currently Athena Swan Lead for the School of Languages, Cultures, Art History and Music. I am the Principal Investigator on the Feminist Translation Network project.

Edward Clay is a Teaching Fellow in Modern Languages, teaching a range of modules in translation studies. He specialises in legal translation and translation technology. He has worked as a translator for many years and has had a number of fiction, non-fiction and audiovisual translations published. His research interests focus on empirical and interdisciplinary approaches to translation studies, ...

I am Lecturer in Modern Languages and I teach across the entire provision of Core modules for the Italian programme. I am also the Italian coordinator for the LfA programme. I specialize in nineteenth-century literature, philosophy and philosophy of language and I have devoted a large part of my research to Giacomo Leopardi. I am also interested in contemporary thought, as well as psychological ...

I am a Lecturer in Modern Languages specialising in the linguistics (especially morphosyntax) and dialectology of the Ibero-Romance language family (Spanish, Portuguese, Galician, Catalan and other lesser-known languages such as Asturian, Aragonese, Aranese, Ladino/Judaeo-Spanish, Leonese, Mirandese and Mozarabic). Before coming to Birmingham in 2017, I was a Research Fellow at Pembroke College, ...

Dr Anissa Daoudi's research examines how language and translations shape memories, public narratives, and enhance campaigns for transitional justice. Her project: Breaking the Protectorate of Silence: Violence Against Women in 1990s Algeria, funded by the Leverhulme Fellowship, focuses on the experience of women survivors of sexual violence and rape committed during the Civil War.  ...

I study early Italian literature and the historical evolution of the Italian language. I love Dante and his world, which is the fascinating and complex universe of the art and thought of the European Middle Ages.

As an Italian art historian, Maria is deeply passionate about Italian visual culture, and she is keen to convey this passion through her teaching.

She holds an MA in History of Art from the University of Siena, and a Ph.D. in Italian Studies from the University of Birmingham. Supported by a prestigious AHRC scholarship through M3C (Midlands 3 Cities) and part of the groundbreaking Interdisciplina ...

My main research interest is in understanding how our cognitive capacities give rise to the patterns we see in language and how language learners might use these patterns to build up knowledge of their language. I work with the Out Of Our Minds team to understand language knowledge and optimize language learning and am Editor-in-Chief of the journal Cognitive Linguistics.

I am Professor of French Discourses of Sexuality and a specialist in interdisciplinary sexuality and gender studies, critical theory, and the history of diagnostic and cultural concepts. My enduring research interest is in questions of exceptionality, difficulty, and (ab)normality as they are represented and understood in cultural, medical, and political fields. My most recent work has been on ...

I have been teaching Japanese as a foreign language at the University of Birmingham since 1999. I teach all levels to a wide range of students from undergraduate students to the public. My role also includes a committee member of the BATJ Speech Content for University Students and OCR External Verifier as well as Assessor of the QCB/NVQ for Japanese.

Dr Evans is Associate Professor in the Department of Modern Languages. Elliot is the author of Queer Permeability: The Body in French Thought from Wittig to Preciado(2020). Their research is concerned with the varied constructions of sexuality and gender across cultures; with the biopolitical formation of these identities, and the ways in which they are elaborated through writing and visual ...

My specialisms lie in translation, especially audiovisual translation, and writing by French and Francophone women authors. I am the Convenor of the BA Modern Languages Translation Studies pathway.

Kinga is Policy Impact Postdoctoral Fellow on the project ‘In-between spaces: Central and Eastern European Art and Artists in the UK in the UK Creative Economies’, responsible for the project’s media presence and dissemination. She has a background in cross-cultural psychology and a PhD in sociology and migration studies from the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies. ...

As Assistant Professor in the Department of Modern Languages, John Goodyear is the Academic Lead for the UoB Online MA programme Digital Media and Global Communication. Alongside this teaching work, he is Chair of the Year Abroad for the School of Languages, Cultures, Art History and Music.

In addition to his teaching role at the University of Birmingham, Goodyear has featured as a presenter on ...

I first came to Birmingham as a Colloquial Assistant (lectrice), as part of the University’s long-standing exchange with The Université Lumière Lyon 2.  After a few months back in France, I decided to return to Birmingham and the Department of French Studies, again as a Colloquial Assistant.  I have not left since.  

 

My research interests focus on the relationship between social and political inequalities and German culture in the period between 1750 and 1850. I have a particular interest in outsider figures, and above all the work of J.M.R. Lenz and Heinrich von Kleist. I have recently published a monograph on German-language pastoral writing, and am currently working on projects on the ...

I am a native speaker of French, and come from the Franche-Comté region in Eastern France. I have been teaching French at the University of Birmingham since 2006, and have 15 years of experience teaching French as Foreign Language in France and the UK.

I am a specialist of Francophone Studies and World Literature, with a particular interest in the global reception, adaptation circulation and translation of Francophone literature. A published translator, with a growing body of work in Translation Studies, I am fluent in French and German, and am currently learning Spanish.

The majority of my research focuses on the postcolonial literature, film ...

I am an academic writer in the field of Translation Studies. My current research focuses on the operation of ideology at the level of Qur’an translation in the process of political mobilization. I am particularly interested in what a focus on ideology and religion can bring to understanding the notion of translation as a social activity.

I am a medievalist with an extension into the sixteenth century. I am particularly interested in late-medieval didactic literature in German and Latin, in the presentation of animals in literature, and in the Swiss Reformation.

I teach on a variety of language and content modules. I lecture mainly on early-modern French literature and culture, particularly 17th-Century texts, and on 20th-Century writing and film.

My work is on French film and the visual arts, film and feminist theory and philosophy, and sexuality and gender.

My research interests focus on cross-cultural comparative approaches to exile and migration. My most recent monograph explores the experience of exile as a cultural topology, considering space as relational and giving emphasis to the interconnectedness of the different places that refugees inhabit throughout their journeys. I teach courses on Spanish language, literature and culture.

Sara Jones is Professor in the Department of Modern Languages. Her current research analyses the political, social and cultural processes of remembering state socialist dictatorship.

My work focuses on protest movements and political violence in the 20^th and 21^st centuries. In this context, I am particularly interested in questions of gender, race, class, dis/ability, and political ideology. My research transgresses disciplinary boundaries and draws on a range of theoretical frameworks including feminist theory, cultural studies, and critical security studies.

My main research interests are Russian émigré literature, interviewing and creative nonfiction, translation as creative writing practice, literary hybridity and translingual creative writing in modern languages.

I have been teaching Spanish language modules at the University of Birmingham since 2004 . I have over 20 years teaching experience as a foreign language teacher in all sectors,  from school children to adults. I am a native speaker of Spanish and I was born in Argentina.

I have many years’ experience as a Chinese language teacher. I teach both undergraduate and postgraduate students at beginner, intermediate and advanced Chinese language levels at the University of Birmingham. I enjoy helping students learn Mandarin and like to see their enjoyment and appreciation of Chinese language and culture. It gives me a sense of achievement when students succeed in ...

A language teacher for 30 years, I am still learning a lot from every new student. I enjoy sharing my native language and culture but above all I derive a lot of satisfaction from inspiring students to become a good language tutor for themselves and keep learning beyond their university years.

“To have another language is to possess a second soul” - Charlemagne

Tanya Lipatova teaches Russian at CREES from ab initio to advanced level with particular emphasis on written Russian at undergraduate level (Essay courses) and on oral Russian at postgraduate level (CP4 Advanced Oral Russian).

By combining linguistics and translation studies, I am interested in the interdisciplinary study of cross-cultural communication, which will generate new insights, and challenge the ways in which we have understood how languages, people, and ideas interact through translation. 

Methodological investigation, and specifically corpora, is also at the centre of my research, and my recent ...

Nicholas Martin is Reader in European Intellectual History in the Department of Modern Languages (German Studies), and Director of the University’s Institute for German Studies. 

His research interests include aspects of modern German intellectual history and of the cultural history of war and political violence in twentieth-century Germany.

Academic CV

Luis A. Medina Cordova is Lecturer in Modern Languages. He specialises in the study of contemporary Ecuadorian and Latin American writing. After being awarded a PhD in Latin American Studies by King's College London in 2020, he has held teaching positions at King's College London and the University of Manchester. In 2021, he won the Association of Hispanists of Great Britain & Ireland ...

My primary research interests are concentrated in areas concerned with understanding the crucial role of learning in human language, its behaviour and use. Previously, my work focused on investigating word or lexical processing, but currently, it extends to the study of natural communication. Methodologically, my work combines experimentation and computational modelling with advanced statistical ...

I teach Spanish language and translation, drawing on my practice as a literary translator and my background in visual arts. I am interested in creativity in translation, co-translation and the ways that art, translation and text-making can interact.

I have been teaching Japanese as a foreign language in Higher Education over 15 years. I am responsible for all aspects of Japanese language programmes including module development, year abroad and internship programme in Japan.

My work focuses on twentieth-century poetry and literary theory, with an emphasis on Russian modernist poetry and Russian Formalism. My current research draws on theories of the lyric, old/new media, and the urban environment to place questions of literary form in the dynamic contexts of the modernizing city and the 1905 and 1917 revolutions.

I joined the University of Birmingham (The Department of Modern languages, Languages for All) in 2022 as Subject Lead.  I have taught Italian language and culture for over 24 years in different European institutional settings, designing and delivering classes targeted at students from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds.

My research interests spread across Russophone literature, translation studies, post-Soviet media culture and genre studies. My latest monograph is focused on collaborative self-translation drawing on the bilingual work of the Russian-American poet Joseph Brodsky (see my monograph publication Joseph Brodsky and Collaborative Translation).

Currently, I am working on the project ...

Dr Lorraine Ryan is an award-winning international researcher in the fields of Spanish literature, memory studies, and gender. She has been a visiting fellow to the IMLR (Institute of Modern Languages Research Institute) in the University of London (2014-2015),  and the Georg Eckert Institute for School Textbook Research in Leipzig (2015-16). Dr. Ryan has published extensively on ...

I have been at Birmingham since 2005. I teach Latin American culture, literature and intellectual history as well as Spanish language and translation.

Teaching Spanish language for undergraduates has been both a challenge and a pleasure for the past seven years. I sincerely hope to continue doing so for many coming years.

I am a Senior Lecturer in Modern Languages at the Department of Modern Languages, where I also coordinate the Portuguese Studies programme and the Instituto Camões’ Cátedra Gil Vicente. 

My research focuses on the intersections between the cultures of the Portuguese-speaking world, postcolonial studies, and theories of world literature, drawing attention to the ...

I am an Associate Professor in Modern Languages specialising in the comparative morphosyntax of Spanish and the Romance languages, with a particular focus on the documentation of non-standard and endangered varieties (including Italo-Greek), phenomena of language contact and microvariation.

My research interests revolve around the colonial and post-colonial encounters between European and non-European worlds, in particular in the cultural and political realms. My recent works look at the making of imperial heroes in Britain and France since the era of 'New imperialism' (second half of the nineteenth century), the history of the conquest and decolonization of the Sahara, ...

I am a Teaching Fellow and the language co-ordinator for Languages for All (LfA) German. Besides teaching most of the modules, I work closely with colleagues from the German Department and external departments, such as Law, whose joint students are hosted by LfA. I am a native speaker of German, and I come from the Tyrol in Austria. I have been teaching German at the University of Birmingham ...

I am native speaker of Spanish, and I was born in Granada, Spain. I have been teaching Spanish as a foreign language since 2009 in different institutions and universities. In January 2023 I became a Teaching Fellow in Spanish at the University of Birmingham delivering Spanish modules for the Languages for All programme and also working in the Digital First project.

Nadine Sturm is DAAD Lecturer in German Studies, teaching mainly German Sprachpraxis (Communicative Skills), Landeskunde and Use of Language. Her research interests are focused on German present-day language, including construction grammar, corpus research and German syntax.

Dr Tang has taught a wide range of modules on undergraduate Chinese language programmes and also postgraduate translation studies. His expertise is in the field of innovative language learning and teaching with specific reference to the use of software, mobile applications and digital tools. In 2011, he was awarded a prize for “Excellence in Teaching and Supporting Student Learning”.

 I specialise in training students to become translators. I am currently the Head of the School of Languages, Cultures, Art History and Music and prior to that I was the Director of Admissions for the College of Arts and Law.

I came to Birmingham in 2006, and am based in the Department of Modern Languages. Among a range of teaching and research interests, I am particularly keen to promote the study of French literature and the visual arts, and the interactions between them.

Having taught Russian across the world to students of all levels and various cultural backgrounds Maria joined the University of Birmingham in 2022 in the capacity of Teaching Fellow in Russian. Alongside practicing teaching Maria is conducting research in modern teaching technics based on the use of user-generated content and in particular Internet memes. 

Maria is also involved in the ...

I have been a lecturer in the Department of Modern Languages (Hispanic Studies) since 1994. I teach medieval Spanish literature and Spanish language and linguistics. My research interests lie in the fields of medieval Spanish history and historiography, textual editing, diachronic phonology and syntax.

My research project the Estoria de Espanna Digital (estoria.bham.ac.uk) is the first major ...

I was appointed to the University of Birmingham in 2007, having taught previously at the universities of Bristol and Newcastle. I am a specialist in nineteenth-century French prose fiction, especially the work of Honoré de Balzac. My current research focuses on adaptations of classic novels from this period in a variety of media including silent film, graphic novels, and stage musicals.

I am an enthusiastic teacher and student of Hispanic Literature and Culture and especially that of the Spanish Golden Age, an era that originated many of the most compelling, sophisticated and influential works in Hispanic literature and art. I also have a long-standing interest in translation, having translated (independently and in collaboration) several golden-age comedias, a quantity of ...

As a student, you are most likely to know me in my role as the School’s Chair of Year Abroad. I teach in all German Core language courses as well as Translation in Practice and post-1870 German literature classes.

I am interested in students and their learning journeys, particularly in Modern Languages and have published papers and books on The Year Abroad, Students as Partners, and Staff ...

I am a Lecturer in Chinese Interpreting in the Department of Modern Languages. Prior to joining the University of Birmingham, I taught translation at Hang Seng University of Hong Kong , Beijing Normal University-Baptist University of Hong Kong, United International College, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, amongst others.

A published translator, I have translated ten books on religion, ...

I am an Associate Professor in Interpreting and Translation studies. My research specialities include interpreter’s identity and identity management, representing interpersonal features in translation and interpreting, and use of interpreting in mediation.

I held the Established Chair of French Studies from 1990 to 2011. My research derives from specialist bases in French Studies, but is also cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary. In general, I am interested in the relations of history, politics and narrative form - the operations of ideology in prose fiction, as they manifest themselves in particular texts. In French Studies, I work ...

I have published widely in various genres of Medieval literature: epic, romance and translation from Latin to Medieval French, with a particular interest in the translation by Jean de Meun of the Letters of Abelard and Heloise. Latterly I have been working with Prof Glyn Burgess on publishing editions of Old French narrative lays.

I hold a Personal Chair in French Cultural History. My main research areas are 20th-century Cultural History (especially Jean Paulhan and the Nouvelle Revue française), the life and work of Armand Petitjean, and Franco-British Inter-Cultural Studies, with a particular focus on the French presence in London.

 

I have research interests in Zola’s fiction, French Cinema and  screen adaptation. My publications include studies on Zola, various aspects of the cinema and  together with Ron Hallmark and Ian Pickup, I have published books and articles  on studying in France.

I joined the Department of French in 1973 and taught language and literature at all levels until I retired in 2008.

 

Since I retired I have continued to research into post-World War II  literary narrative: forms of personal and social memory, myth and the everyday with reference to war and post-holocaust culture, with a particular interest in psychoanalytical approaches to trauma and the works of Julien Gracq, Patrick Modiano, J.-M. G. le Clézio and Henry Bauchau.

I joined the University of Birmingham as a lecturer in German in 1980 and retired as Professor of Modern German Studies in 2014. I am a member of the research project  “Inner and outer exile in fascist Germany and Spain: a comparative study”, funded by the Leverhulme Trust.

My main research interests lie in the literature, culture and society of Germany around the end of the eighteenth century.

My main research interests are writing under National Socialism, particularly the non-conformist writers of inner exile. I teach courses on German language, literature and history. I am also interested in all aspects of foreign language learning and teaching, instructed second language acquisition and pedagogical grammar. 

My main teaching and research interests are in 20th and 21th century Spanish literature and cinema, although I have also an interest in the works of Jose Saramago, Felisberto Hernandez and the Spanish philosopher María Zambrano. Currently I am working on the literature of the Spanish Civil War, including graphic novels. 

I taught Spanish, Portuguese and Luso-Brazilian Language and Literature at the University of Birmingham for 31 years, retiring in 1998.

Since I retired as a Senior Lecturer in the Department, I have been focusing on full-time research into the lives of women in seventeenth-century France. 

 

Dr Hany Rashwan is a scholar of Arabic and Comparative Poetics. He is an Assistant professor of Arabic Language and Literature at UAE University as well as an Honorary Research Fellow at The University of Birmingham. He is the recipient of the International Society for the History of Rhetoric (ISHR) Research Fellowship. From 2018 to 2021, he was a Research Fellow of Arabic Literary Theory in a ...

My research is on German literary and intellectual topics since the later nineteenth century, including Friedrich Nietzsche, Max Weber, Franz Kafka, Thomas Mann, Bertolt Brecht.

Wide ranging research interests in 19th and 20th century German culture, philosophy and politics, especially from the end of the First World War to the present. Has published books and essays on German literature and society post-1945, on the worker-culture movement of the Weimar Republic, on culture in the Third Reich, on protest and democracy from the 1960s to the 1980s and on the reception of ...

Jacqueline Visconti is Full Professor in Italian Linguistics at Genoa University, as well as Honorary Research Fellow of the University of Birmingham and Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Reading.