Research

Established in 1995, the Centre promotes the teaching of francophone Belgian literature on university courses, and hosts a range of activities relating to the field of francophone Belgian studies, including seminars, conferences, publications, writing competitions, film screenings and other cultural events.

Take me to the Centre de recherches francophone belges website

Involving colleagues in Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies, the Centre brings together researchers from across the University of Edinburgh working on research related to Latin America.

Take me to the Centre for Contemporary Latin American Studies website

Spanning a range of disciplines in European, Islamic, American and Asian studies, including medieval literatures and cultures, the Centre brings together around 70 researchers across the University of Edinburgh.

Take me to the Centre for Medieval & Renaissance Studies website

Based around a series of events, and led by colleagues in German and Russian Studies, this research strand interrogates the ways in which cultural encounters and cultural dialogues take place.

Take me to the Cultural Encounters/Dialogues webpage

Bringing together specialists in the fields of anglophone and francophone diasporas, this international network is unique in comparing the various diasporic communities’ responses to issues of identity, belonging and relocation in the specific contexts of British/French and Canadian immigration policies.

Take me to the Diaspolinks website

Initially funded by an AHRC Research Network Grant (2015-2017), this collaborative network led by Professor Marion Schmid brings together an international team of researchers and artists from France, Belgium, Austria, Romania, and the UK to forge new directions in the study of cinematic intermediality. Its particular focus is the ways in which the moving image is shaped and revitalised by artistic cross-fertilisation.

Take me to the Film and the Other Arts website

Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), this network is co-ordinated by Dr Nicola Frith (University of Edinburgh) and Professor Joyce Hope Scott (Boston University). Through conferences, workshops, roundtables and collaborative projects, the INOSAAR brings together activists, academics and other partners dedicated to reparations and other forms of transitional justice for the enslavement and genocide of peoples of African descent.

Take me to the INOSAAR website

Led by Professor Marion Schmid and Dr Fabien Arribert-Narce, this research strand interrogates the theory and practice of ‘intermediality’, that is, the interrelationships between different art forms and their signification. With a particular focus on events, several jointly organised with Meiji University in Tokyo, the strand brings together academics, research students and practitioners to foster exchange and initiate new collaborative projects.

Read an interview with Fabien on our research partnership with Meiji University

Take me to research section of the Intermediality website

Based in European Languages and Cultures in LLC, this research strand explores the interplay between violence and language in various historical and cultural contexts and from different disciplinary perspectives (including literary and linguistic studies, translation, and memory studies).

Founded in 2010, the Centre’s mission is to advance knowledge in the field of Russian language studies and to foster a broader understanding of Russia through research, academic training and knowledge exchange.

Take me to the Princess Dashkova Russian Centre website

Exacerbated by factors such as the social effects of COVID-19 and the refugee crisis in Europe, United Nations figures indicate that one in three women will experience Gender-Based Violence (GBV) in their lifetime. Dr Charlotte Bosseaux has been funded to consider the ways in which the voices of GBV survivors are translated. The project is practice-based, creating two versions of a multilingual documentary that audiences will be asked to assess on the basis of whether the translation techniques used have done justice to survivors' voices. In this way, and through asking interpreters and translators how they feel about their work, the film is underpinned by new research into the ethics of translation.

Running over 18 months, the project is a collaboration with Saheliya, a Scottish-based charity supporting survivors, the filmmaker Ling Lee, and language professionals recruited via the specialist company Screen Language. As well as establishing which translation method - for example, subtitling or voice-over - is best for translating audiovisual personal narratives, it will provide good practice guidelines for translators, translation companies, filmmakers and charities, including on how to work together effectively on sensitive material.

Read our interview with Charlotte about the Gender-Based Violence project

Find out more about the project on its website

Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC): January 2022 to July 2023

LLC team: Dr Charlotte Bosseaux (Principal Investigator)

Italian Great War literature is an extraordinarily diverse corpus in terms of genres, agents, and ideological backgrounds. Fatherland as Motherland was one of the first research projects to explore the conflict’s gendered nature, especially the interplay between nationalism and gender. The project combined methodologies from literary studies, political history, and gender and cultural studies to examine both fiction and non-fiction, including diaries, letters and memoirs. It excavated the layered site of invention of Italian Great War literature, interpreting between the lines of its various conflicting masculine discourses and representations.

Fatherland as Motherland studied the female icon of the motherland in Italian Great War literature by analysing its unstable symbolic contents and rhetorical features and comparing them with nationalist propaganda. It proposed a new interpretation of the exploitation of the literature in fascist nationalist culture by analysing edited collections of war writings published in the 1920s and 30s. Overall, the project marked the centenary of World War I by fostering a better understanding of the gendered character of modern nationalism and its cultural roots against the backdrop of European integration. Findings were published in the 2020 book 'Mobilizing Cultural Identities in the First World War: History, Representations and Memory', and shared in various papers and talks.

Watch or listen to Cristina Savettieri describe the project on vimeo 

Funded by a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Individual Fellowship: September 2015 to August 2017

LLC team: Dr Cristina Savettieri (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow), Professor Federica Pedriali (Supervisor)

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the world saw transnational mobility of Russian speakers on an unprecedented scale. The UK has experienced a dramatic growth of Russian-speaking migrants and a rapid development of Russophone communities and border-spanning cultural activities – from art galleries, costume balls and festivals to hundreds of schools, clubs, restaurants and internet sites.

Combining a discursive studies approach with globalisation theories, the Global Russians project develops a new paradigm to explore the construction, articulation and commodification of ‘global Russian’ identity and its community-building potential. By examining the apparently high level of Russian cultural engagement in the UK, the project's findings aim to deepen our understanding of ‘community’ itself.

Global Russians is part of the multi-university Cross-Language Dynamics: Reshaping Community Consortium.

Find out more about the project on the Cross-Language Dynamics website

Browse the project's directory of Russophone and Russia related cultural organisations in the UK

Funded as part of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Open World Research Initiative (OWRI): October 2016 to July 2021

LLC team: Professor Lara Ryazanova-Clarke (Principal Investigator), Dr Yulia Lukyanova (Research Assistant, 2017 to 2019), Angelos Theocharis (PhD candidate, 2017 to 2021)

The Holocaust is known through translation: survivors’ voices have come down to us through translation, or in languages other than their first. Particularly raw and difficult is the experience of testifying in court, in the face of the accused and under public scrutiny. How are Victims' Voices Heard? explores the work of translators and interpreters in the trial of 22 former SS Auschwitz personnel in Frankfurt in the mid-1960s. Including the voices of dozens of witnesses, speaking 10 different languages, this event had a profound impact on public understanding of the Holocaust in Germany and beyond.

How are Victims' Voices Heard? involves a series of archival research trips in which Professor Peter Davies will engage with key sources and archive specialists. Working towards a monograph, he will explore interpreters' professional practice and ethical self-understanding during the Frankfurt trial, showing how these affected the ways in which victims’ voices were heard in and beyond the courtroom. The research asks vital questions about how victims of genocide can make their voices heard in legal systems. It has the potential to transform the way we understand the legal processes by which perpetrators are brought to justice and the crucial role of translation in defining public perceptions of the survivor experience.

Funded by a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship: September 2022 to August 2024

LLC team: Professor Peter Davies (Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellow)

Latin American Indigenous filmmaking is often deemed too artisan, unrefined and difficult for 'global' audiences to grasp. Building on existing work with the Latin American Coordinating Council for Indigenous Film and Media (CLACPI), Indigenous Cinematics brings together diverse disciplines and communities of practice to recentre its significance. The project engages with issues of authorship, language diversity and audiovisual translation. It aims to influence perceptions of film's role in reflecting cultural diversity, and facilitate both public and scholarly access to a more mixed ecology of film form.

Indigenous Cinematics is producing a range of materials, including subtitled films and texts, on the art and act of making film in Indigenous Latin America. In 2020, films selected, translated and subtitled as part of the project were screened at the Smithsonian Institution's Mother Tongue Film Festival in Washington DC. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the project is supporting four Indigenous filmmakers and producers in virtual residencies - a way for them to share, exchange, debate, build and develop new film projects. In addition, the Edinburgh-based screenwriter and filmmaker Armando Bautista García is working on a set of resources exploring the art of creative production in the Mixtec language. 

Visit the Indigenous Cinematics website [external]

Funded by an Arts and Humanities Research Council (ARHC) Leadership Fellowship: October 2018 to June 2020

LLC team: Dr Charlotte Gleghorn (Principal Investigator)

Nicolás Guillén Landrián was one of only three Afro-Cuban directors active at the Cuban national film institute (ICAIC) in its first decade. Nephew of a revolutionary poet, and son on an attorney who advocated for Camagüey sugar workers, his 35mm film classics include the notoriously-censored Coffea arábiga (1968), which ironized the Havana greenbelt urban agricultural project, unearthing its racialized undertones. After leaving Cuba for the US, Guillén Landrián filmed his final and only audiovisual work in exile, Inside Downtown (2001), a portrait of artists and poets of his generation, including the cult Afro-Cuban poet, Esteban Luis Cárdenas.

In 2020, in conjunction with the Havana Glasgow and Africa in Motion film festivals, Dr Jessica Gordon-Burroughs and Dr Raquel Ribeiro screened these two works together with a 2013 film by Julio Ramos and Raydel Araoz featuring extensive interviews with Guillén Landrián’s widow, the painter Gretel Alfonso. The accompanying panel discussion, streamed live online, featured the researchers in conversation with Julio Ramos. The Memory in Progress project also created a video archive of testimonials from Cuban intellectuals, curators and artists on the meaning of Nicolás Guillén Landrián for the history of Cuban film and future generations of Cuban filmmakers. In 2021, Jessica Gordon-Burroughs was awarded Best Essay in Latin American Visual Culture Studies by the Latin American Studies Association for “The Pixelated Afterlife of Nicolás Guillén Landrián” which looks in particular at Inside Downtown.

Watch / listen to the Memory in Progress video archive on YouTube

Funded by the School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures (LLC) Impact Fund

LLC Team: Dr Jessica Gordon-Burroughs, Dr Raquel Ribeiro

This body of interdisciplinary work spans culture, identity, and politics to consider questions of representation, inclusion, and power. Across multiple projects, Dr Leanne Dawson examines film and screen studies, literature, theatre, performance art, archives, and festivals across European, Asian, and North American cultures. Work on representation on page, stage, and screen focuses on working-class and LGBTQI+ identities, the latter taking in themes of 'passing', and queer femininities, among others. Having a profound impact beyond academia, the research also explores queer spaces and the people who use them, including film festivals and archives, and on improving accessibility, equality, diversity, and inclusion in the arts.

Most of the work is textual analysis, although Dawson’s other methodologies include qualitative and quantitative approaches, and historical analyses in order to theorise gender, sexuality, and class/socio-economic position. In addition to finalising a monograph on queer identities on the German screen from the 1930s to the present day, she is currently researching an AHRC-funded monograph (Poor Queers), which explores the intersection of LGBTQI+ and working-class identities on British screens, a project which will also lead to a range of other publications, including best practice documents.

Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), Creative Scotland, Arts Council England, Goethe Institut, British Council, DAAD, and British Film Institute.

LLC team: Dr Leanne Dawson (Principal Investigator)

Restless Earth examines German-language literature about the Second World War to look at how non-Jewish writers approached the topic of the Holocaust atrocities committed outside concentration camps and prisons. The history of face-to-face mass killing by the German armed forces on the Eastern Front has remained marginal to collective understandings of the Holocaust until relatively recently but this project looks at how this and similar phenomena have been acknowledged in literary texts since the war, albeit not often explicitly.

The project involves a three-day conference in August 2021 on Germany’s historical and contemporary perspective on Eastern Europe, asking among other questions how the East’s construction as an exotic, vast and violent space has contributed to the side-lining of certain aspects of Holocaust history in German popular discourse. Dr Jenny Watson’s first paper on the research, looking at Romanian German Literature in particular, was published in The Modern Language Review in 2021.

Find out more about the Haunted Landscapes of German Eastern Europe conference

Funded by a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship: February 2019 to January 2021 

LLC team: Dr Jenny Watson (former Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow, now Chancellor's Fellow)

Building on Laura Bradley’s earlier AHRC-funded project on theatre censorship in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) 1961-1990, Who’s Watching Who? marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The public engagement project involved award-winning dramatist Peter Arnott writing a play, Ensemble, based on the research, and sharing this creative process with audiences. The relationship between film, research and audience was traced by film-maker, academic and project co-designer, Susan Kemp, in the 2016 documentary Writing Ensemble. The project was developed in partnership with Playwrights' Studio, Scotland, which connects playwrights with audiences and encourages critical discussion about playwriting.

Who’s Watching Who? comprised 13 events in four UK cities, including rehearsed readings of the play-in-progress and screenings of the film. The project website showcased archival and contemporary resources, including a blog by playwright Peter Arnott. Through this extensive engagement, audiences reported learning more about how GDR censorship functioned, the psychology of surveillance, the ethics of playwriting and research, and the complexities and possibilities of verbatim theatre. A collaborative symposium promoted awareness of opportunities for collaboration between theatre practitioners and the Higher Education sector.

Visit the Who's Watching Who? website [external]

Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC): November 2014 to January 2016

LLC team: Professor Laura Bradley (Principal Investigator), Susan Kemp (Co-designer)

Whose Voice is it Anyway? is a series of themed events delving into translation practices. Organised by Dr Charlotte Bosseaux, and held in collaboration with the European Commission, the research-led events bring together academics, students, professional translators, and their audiences. To date, the University of Edinburgh has hosted three events in the Whose Voice… series, variously supported by the Institut Français and Goethe-Institut. As well as talks and panel discussions, the events have featured writers in conversation with their translators.

Each Whose Voice… event deals with a different theme or set of challenges in translation. The first highlighted the importance of voice in many different settings, from interpreting to translating, acting to writing. The second focused on what happens to the voices of women in translation and interpreting, covering territory as diverse as interpreting for the victims of gender-based-violence, translating mommy blogs, and Dalit literature. The most recent event in the series was an evening dedicated to the translation of emotions. This event reflected on how translation mediates emotions in different contexts, with a particular focus on the role of translators and translation when conveying trauma.

Read synopses and browse photos from Whose Voice is it Anyway?

Funded by the European Commission

LLC team: Dr Charlotte Bosseaux (Principal Investigator)

Since the mid-20th century, Peruvian women nonfiction filmmakers have been giving voice to the country's disenfranchised populations in documentaries that entwine individual and collective traumas. Currently, they are fostering a thriving nonfiction audio-visual scene with transmedia characteristics and global linkages. Despite the artistic and social impact of this body of work, it has hovered under the historiographic radar. By applying feminist and decolonising frameworks and methodologies to the study of Women’s Nonfiction Filmmaking in Peru, this project seeks to foreground women’s work and resignify Peruvian – and Latin American – film history.

Using active research tools, Dr Isabel Seguí is combining oral histories, personal archives and interviews to uncover the hidden and complex scenarios of Peruvian women’s filmmaking and complete a picture of women’s creative involvement in filmmaking at different stages. The project’s interconnected outputs include an academic publication, public engagement, and archive digitalisation, the latter involving the development of an online hub of primary and secondary source documents.

Listen to our Beyond the Books podcast episode with Dr Isabel Seguí ​​​​​​

Funded by a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship: September 2020 to August 2023

LLC team: Dr Isabel Seguí (Principal Investigator; Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow)