An AHRC funded Research Network (2011-2013)
This two year AHRC funded Research Network brought together leading academics from ten universities, and employed methods and perspectives from across the fields of literature, museum studies, linguistics, history, sociology and anthropology to examine the determinants and impact of the construction of cultural identity and the act of translation as collaboration and shared knowledge.
The group’s collective transnational scholarship highlighted a rich seam of cultural translation in the ‘relative and related’ intersections of creolisation, Britishness and Global English of interest to scholars, teachers, creative artists, museum educators and education professionals.
The proposal, premised on translation as collaboration and shared interdisciplinary knowledges, responded to the ‘Highlight Notice’ for ‘Translating Cultures’. It gathered researchers whose collective scholarship is grounded in transcultural discourse, and intersecting theoretical questions on the complexities of cultural translation. It critically questionned meanings of cultural translation, by regarding first, texts marked by creolisation, a discourse originated through intercultural exchanges (Glissant, Brathwaite).
The results were new interpretive platforms contributing to further understanding of postcolonial and diasporic art-forms, and the impact upon creative and educational practices. Focusing on the relation between the ‘cultures within’ we explored how texts might mediate cultural change.
The research is particularly relevant to English and Comparative Literatures, American Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Museum Studies, Linguistics, Translation Studies, History, Sociology and Anthropology.