This post is part of our Research Initiation Scheme for 2020-2021.
On the 25th of June, six candidates from the current PhD cohort at Queen’s University Belfast shared a session entitled ‘PhD Flashtalks’ during the Modern Languages CDRG Research Showcase 2021. Dr Ricki O’Rawe participated as the chair.
Margaret Cunningham, who is a second year PhD candidate in French, began the session with a synopsis of her thesis project, which carries the working title ‘Narratives of Disaster in the French Caribbean’. Margaret believes that in the Caribbean context, the French departments of Guadeloupe and Martinique have been largely overlooked in studies of catastrophe. Thus, Margaret has made this silence the focus of her thesis, examining disaster narratives against the backdrop of a colonial and specifically slave past.
Next, Annie Jowett, a first-year Ph.D. student in Irish, discussed her thesis on ‘The Irish Dialect of South Leinster: The Onomastic Evidence’. Through her research, Annie aspires to address and contribute to the gap in linguistic knowledge about the Irish language and discover where the Irish spoken in South Leinster fits into the dialect continuum of the Irish language in Ireland. The Irish language has been obsolete in South Leinster since the turn of the twentieth century. In addition, the linguistic history of the region is complex in terms of language contact; Annie gave the example of the survival of an Old English dialect named Yola which survived in the South-East of the province until the late nineteenth century. Annie is employing placenames in the region as her primary source of dialect evidence, intending to focus on the distribution of stress patterning in local pronunciations.
A first year PhD candidate in French – Laura Kennedy – spoke about her investigation into how the languages of French and English are employed and reshaped in world literature. Within her research, Laura investigates how novelists from French and British ex-colonies and non-metropolis have re-appropriated these languages and how they have employed a range of non-standardized modes of expression in their work. Focusing on fictional language manipulation, Laura scrutinizes colonial ideologies, such as linguistic authority and ownership. By not only comparing Francophone literatures between themselves, but also extending this comparison to Anglophone literatures, Laura believes her project has the potential to reposition how language politics and world literature are regarded and theorized.
Moving on, Sahar Othmani, who is a Translation and Interpreting PhD candidate, presented her thesis on ‘Bridging Distance through Meaning: Indirect Literary Translation into Arabic’. She primarily outlined the mode of indirect translation as involving an author that avails of a mediating agent to carry out a translation, as they have neither access nor linguistic competence in an ultimate source text. Sahar discussed her use of practice-based research to conduct a translation from Korean into Arabic – two cultures which are geographically, culturally and linguistically diverse and distant – by using English as a mediating language. Through an interdisciplinary approach, Sahar hopes to elucidate that there is value in undertaking indirect translation.
Hannah Smith, a second-year PhD student in Translation, then discussed her thesis project on ‘Media Coverage and Political Violence: Othering during the Troubles in Northern Ireland’. Within her research, Hannah has been analyzing the discursive practices that enable the ‘other’ to be created as a result of media reporting. Thus, media reports of the Troubles from both Anglophone and Irish language print media have served as a key focus. Hannah is particularly interested in investigating ‘othering’ through the sociological lens of the folk devil theory, looking at the binaries of Catholic/Protestant, but also other minoritized groups in Northern Ireland. She has also been investigating significant political violence between 1969-1974 in Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, and Great Britain. Through her research, Hannah aspires to highlight the international consequences of region based conflict.
The sixth and final speaker of the session, Ohud Alkhashan, is a second year PhD student in Interpreting. Her thesis investigates the growing use of Twitter as a professional network in Saudi Arabia. Specifically, she applies internet ethnography to study the experiences of Saudi translators and interpreters on Twitter since 2016, following their interactions as they take place on the platform and other online and offline sites. Ohud strives to unravel if this interaction has impacted their perception and understanding of themselves as translators and interpreters both online and offline. Merging translation and interpreting studies with social media studies, Ohud’s thesis aims to illuminate self-identification and presentation in Saudi Arabia at both a micro and macro level.
The aforementioned PhD students concluded the session with a discussion on the impact of the pandemic on their research and ability to collect data. The candidates also reflected on the difficulty of deciding on a definite theoretical framework for their projects as well as their journey in terms of learning the language of confidence in writing.
Report by Jane McCutcheon, final-year undergraduate in English and Spanish