The Prismatic Jane Eyre Schools project is a joint project run by The Stephen Spender Trust and the University of Oxford, specifically the Oxford Comparative Criticism and Translation Research Centre (OCCT) and the Faculty of English. To find out more about who we are, read below:
Eleni Philippou is the Principal Investigator of the Prismatic Jane Eyre Schools project, which follows on from her postdoctoral work on the OWRI-funded Creative Multilingualism project. She has particular expertise in Translation Studies and Comparative Literature, and recently published her first monograph, Speaking Politically: Adorno and Postcolonial Fiction (Routledge, 2021), which explores the implications of Theodor Adorno’s philosophy for literary studies. As the Postdoctoral Research Fellow at OCCT, she has designed and run workshops and major translation-focused public-engagement activities, such as Oxford Translation Day. Furthermore, she is an award-winning poet, with a number of poems published in both British and international anthologies and journals.
Matthew Reynolds serves as Co-Investigator of the Schools project. He is Professor of English and Comparative Criticism at the University of Oxford, and Chair of the Oxford Comparative Criticism and Translation Research Centre (OCCT); he leads the larger Prismatic Translation and Prismatic Jane Eyre research endeavours, of which the Schools project is part. He has written a lot of books in the areas of English and Comparative Literature, and Translation Studies, including a couple of novels: you can read about them here.
OCCT is a research centre based jointly in St Anne’s College and the Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH). It brings together experts from across the university to engage in discussion and research relating to comparative and world literatures, and criticism and translation.See more about OCCT here.
The Stephen Spender Trust is a leading UK educational charity. The Stephen Spender Trust raises the profile of translation, multilingualism and language-learning through creative translation workshops in schools, teacher-training, consultancy and public engagement in the field of multilingual creativity, and developing creative translation resources for teachers and translators.
Stacie Allan is a freelance French to English translator, specialising in translating academic and cultural texts. Stacie’s translations have appeared in scholarly journals and publications. She holds a PhD in French literature from the University of Bristol. Her research explored how displacement and intercultural encounters impact on identity and forms of self-expression in the nineteenth-century novel. Stacie undertook the Stephen Spender Trust’s Translators in Schools training in 2014 having developed a passion for outreach work during her studies. She has led translation workshops with primary and secondary schools, and now coordinates education projects for the Trust.
Holly Langstaff joined The Queen’s College Translation Exchange in 2020. She researches and writes about French literature, with a particular focus on Maurice Blanchot, and is currently Lecturer in French at St Anne’s College, Oxford. She project manages the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation and coordinates Bristol Translates Summer School. Holly has a wealth of experience in widening participation in universities, and works with several schools in the West Midlands on outreach initiatives. She is interested in understanding the barriers preventing students from all backgrounds enjoying, and choosing to study, languages.
Charlotte Ryland is Director of the Stephen Spender Trust and founding Director of the Queen’s College Translation Exchange (Oxford), organisations dedicated to promoting language-learning, multilingualism and translation. In both of these roles she aims to engage people of all ages and backgrounds in literary translation, and to bring creative translation activities into UK schools. Until 2019 Charlotte ran New Books in German, a UK-based project that promotes German-language literature across the world.
Participating Translators
Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp is a literary translator working from Arabic, Russian and German into English, whose work has been shortlisted for the Helen & Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize, the Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize and the GLLI Translated YA Prize. She translates novels, nonfiction and children’s books and her published translations include books from Germany, Jordan, Morocco, Palestine, Russia, Switzerland and Syria. Ruth is a passionate advocate for translation and translated literature in schools, especially as part of World Kid Lit Month (September). Ruth is one of the Stephen Spender Trust’s lead workshop facilitators, and has been working on their Creative Translation in the Classroom programme since 2018.
Maja Konkolewska is a freelance translator and interpreter working between Polish and English. She holds an MA in Translation Studies and is a qualified teacher, currently teaching Community Interpreting courses. A graduate of the Stephen Spender Trust’s Translators in Schools programme, she has experience of designing and delivering creative translation workshops in primary, secondary and Polish Saturday schools. Maja is one of the Stephen Spender Trust’s lead workshop facilitators, and has been working on their Creative Translation in the Classroom programme since 2018.
Jessica Rainey is a translator from French and Spanish, and an associate lecturer in translation at Durham and Newcastle universities. Literary translations include contemporary Spanish plays for the Cervantes Theatre in London and poetry from Chile and El Salvador. Events include Protest Poets in Translation at the Southbank Centre and Translation as Collaboration at Newcastle University. She has an MA in Translation Studies, and a BA in English Literature and African & Asian Studies. Jessica has been working with the Stephen Spender Trust and The Queen’s College Translation Exchange since early 2021.
Nisah Sajawal is a freelance translator and proofreader from Spanish and Arabic into English. She graduated with an MA in Translation and Interpreting Studies from the University of Manchester in 2017, and also holds a BA in Spanish and Arabic. She enjoys both technical and creative translation, and her work has ranged from medical and legal texts to song lyrics and short stories. Earlier in 2021, she participated in the Stephen Spender Trust programme ‘Multilingual Creators’ in which she received professional training to design and deliver creative translation workshops in schools.