Genealogies of Knowledge

naskh_7dAHThe evolution and contestation of concepts across time and space

Professor Mona Baker, University of Manchester
The Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies (CTIS) at the University of Manchester has recently been awarded a large Research Grant by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. From 31 March 2016, CTIS members Professor Mona Baker (Principal Investigator) and Dr Luis Pérez-González (Co-investigator) will work with Professor Peter Pormann (Lead Co-investigator, Classics and Graeco-Arabic Studies, University of Manchester) and Dr Saturnino Luz (Senior Research Associate, University of Edinburgh) on a 4-year project that will investigate two sets of interrelated issues:

  1. The historical evolution and transformation through translation of two constellations of key concepts in political and scientific thought that can often be traced back to the ancient Greek world, focusing on three historical lingua francas (Arabic, Latin and English) and seminal moments of change in the reception and reproduction of translated texts and their meanings by subsequent readerships
  2. The ways and means by which civil society actors involved in radical democratic groups and counter-hegemonic globalisation movements contest and redefine the meanings of such cultural concepts today.

For both strands of analysis, the study will build large, diverse electronic corpora of Greek, Arabic, Latin and English and develop a range of open-source tools for corpus analysis and visualisation that harness the power of the computer to process, compare and visualise patterns across these very large textual repositories.
The project team will be supported by an Advisory Board consisting of Manchester-based academics: Dr Guyda Armstrong (Italian Studies), Professor David Langslow (Classics), Dr Maeve Olohan (Center for Translation and Intercultural Studies), Dr Matthew Philpotts (German Studies), Professor Myriam Salama-Carr (Center for Translation and Intercultural Studies), Professor Jacqueline Stacey (English and American Studies) and Dr Andreja Zevnik (International Politics).
The following positions will become available under this award:

  • PhD Studentship in Corpus-based Translation Studies and History of Knowledge Transfer in the 19th/20th Century (starting in September 2016, to be advertised shortly)
  • 2 Postdoctoral Research Associates (starting in September 2016 and January 2017, to be advertised in early 2016).

If you would like to receive updates on the project activities and events, please contact Luis.Perez-Gonzalez@manchester.ac.uk, quoting ‘Genealogies mailing list’ as the e-mail subject.
http://translatingcultures.org.uk/awards/related-awards/genealogies-of-knowledge-the-evolution-and-contestation-of-concepts-across-time-and-space/