About me
Biography
I qualified as a conference interpreter in 1999 and have been working as an interpreter trainer and freelance interpreter ever since. I started my teaching career in conference interpreting at Heriot-Watt University as a Teaching Assistant, before moving to Saarland University for seven years. I then completed my PhD in Interpreting Studies in 2007 and moved to The University of Manchester where I was responsible for setting up a new MA in Conference Interpreting. After another seven years, I moved to the TH Köln - University of Applied Sciences, Cologne, in 2013 to take up a Professorship in the Theory and Practice of Interpreting (English) where I was Programme Director of the MA in Conference Interpreting from 2015 to 2022.
My current research focuses on (1) interpreter agency and ideological positioning in institutional settings, and the impact of interpreters as gatekeepers of multilingual discourse; (2) negotiation and construction of the Self/Other dichotomy and the positioning of language(s) and interpreters in discourse, particularly in contexts of nationalism and immigration; (3) research in interpreting pedagogy and didactics, specifically related to the development of situated expertise and communities of practice. Methodologically, I am particularly interested in descriptive and ethnographic research as a means of conceptualising participant and interpreter response to heteroglossic debate. I am delighted to be a partner on the four year Spanish research project “Frames and Narratives of Translation and of Migration in Europe” which was awarded funding in July 2020 from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation. My contribution will focus on discourses of migration and ethnographic research into interpreted interaction between authorities and migrants in Germany.
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