Steering Comittee
Jan Ceuppens (Director)
Jan Ceuppens is assistant professor at KU Leuven, where he teaches German literature, translation, and interpreting. His research interests include modern and contemporary German literature, translation and reception studies. He has published a monograph on W.G. Sebald (Vorbildhafte Trauer. W.G. Sebalds Die Ausgewanderten und die Rhetorik der Restitution (Eggingen: Isele 2010)) as well as articles on Kafka and Hölderlin and on the interaction between Dutch and German literatures in the 19th and early 20th century. He has translated texts by Mariča Bodrožič, Silke Scheuermann, Thomas Meinecke and Kathrin Röggla.
Jack McMartin (Vice-Director)
Jack McMartin is assistant professor of translation studies and intercultural transfer at KU Leuven. He is also a practicing Dutch-English translator. His current research investigates the production and reception of Dutch literature in translation, focusing on the people, institutions, and spaces that shape the global book market. He is co-editor (with Jan Van Coillie) of Children’s Literature in Translation: Texts and Contexts (Leuven University Press, 2020), winner of the IRSCL Edited Book Award 2021. Jack has also published (with Elke Brems) on the life and work of the American-Dutch translator, translation theorist and poet James Holmes. Jack is a board member of the CETRA – Centre for Translation Studies and is assistant editor of the John Benjamins journal Translation in Society. Jack currently coordinates the ‘Circulation of Science News in the COVID-19 era’ research project (2021–2025), which examines translational practices in global science news flows. With Paola Gentile, he is lead coordinator of ‘Binnenlandse vogels, buitenlandse nesten’ (2020–2022), an international research consortium of Dutch Studies scholars and translation researchers examining the connections between cultural policy and the international circulation of Dutch literature.
Affiliation: KU Leuven
Contact: jack.mcmartin@kuleuven.be
Publications
Tom Toremans
Tom Toremans is assistant professor at KU Leuven, where he teaches English, Scottish and European literature, and literary theory. His research interests include British Romanticism, Scottish literature, periodical studies, and translation and reception studies. He is a member of the steering committee of the Centre for Translation Studies (CETRA) and of the executive board of the Reception Studies Society. He is also a member of the editorial board of the journal Reception: Texts, Readers, Audiences, History. More details on publications and current research projects under his supervision can be found on his personal website.
Elke Brems
Elke Brems is associate professor (‘hoofddocent’) at the Faculty of Arts KU Leuven. She is the head of the Research Unit of Translation Studies at KU Leuven. Her research interests include Dutch literature, Reception Studies and Translation Studies. She has published on contemporary Dutch poetry, literature and poetics during the interwar period, the relation between Dutch culture and other cultures, cultural identity and literature. She is a member of the Board of CETRA (Centre for Translation Studies). She is also a member of the editorial boards of Zacht Lawijd and of Poeziekrant.
Timothy Sirjacobs
Timothy Sirjacobs studied French, German and Dutch literature at the Free University of Brussels (VUB) and at the Heinrich Heine Universität (HHU). After graduating a second master in educational sciences, he is now currently working as a PhD student at KULeuven under the joint supervision of Elke Brems, Reine Meylaerts, and Stéphanie Vanasten (co-supervisor). As part of the BELTRANS-project (KU Leuven, UCLouvain and KBR), he is exploring intra-Belgian translation flows between 1970 and 2020.
Members
Laura Cernat
Laura Cernat is a PhD student at KU Leuven (Belgium), working on an FWO project, under the supervision of Ortwin de Graef (KU Leuven) and Mircea Martin (University of Bucharest). Her research focuses on the specificity of writer-based biofiction, discerned through the analysis of biographical, autobiographical, personal, and artistic documents about the writers portrayed in a set of recent biographical novels. She has attended several international conferences, where she presented work on Virginia Woolf, Henry James, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Vladimir Nabokov as reflected in biofiction. She has published on the degrees of fictionalization in Woolf-inspired biofiction in the edited collection Virginia Woolf and Heritage (Clemson University Press, 2017) and has contributed chapters about biofiction to the forthcoming volumes Theory in the “Post” Era (Bloomsbury) and Author, Authorship, and Authority in the Age of Cultural Studies and New Media (UCL Press).
Rosanne Ceuppens
Rosanne Ceuppens has graduated with a Master’s degree of Literature and Linguistics (Dutch, English) in 2014 and Master of German Literature in 2015 at the VUB and Heinrich-Heine-Universität in Düsseldorf. After having completed a teacher training in linguistics and literary studies, she worked as a teacher at ILT KU Leuven before joining the CERES team. Rosanne is currently working on a Ph.D project on the reception of Heinrich Böll’s novels during the 20th century in the Netherlands and Flanders. Her research entails a textual analysis of Dutch translations and comes to terms with how these translations are received in the target culture. Focusing on the socio-cultural and textual identity of Böll’s translations will not only provide insight into the Flemish and Dutch society but will also shed light on the literary expression of Böll’s works beyond national and spatial boundaries. This project is supervised by Jan Ceuppens and Elke Brems.
Ernest De Clerck
Ernest De Clerck (1993) is a doctor of English Literature. His PhD-project (2017-2021) was called ‘The Reception and Translation of Foreign Literatures in British Romantic Magazines’ and was supervised by Tom Toremans (KU Leuven) and Frederik Van Dam (Radboud University). De Clerck’s research domains are periodical studies, translation studies, and Romanticism. His work focalises on literary magazines of the 1810s and the 1820s, and more particularly on the instances of cultural transfer in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, the London Magazine, the New Monthly Magazine, and the Liberal. By combining a quantitative and qualitative reading of a neglected corpus his research attempts to recalibrate conceptions of nineteenth-century British literature from mostly insular or self-sufficient, to a more accurate image of a cross-cultural complex which places cultural transfer at the heart of a European Romanticism.
Louise Dumont
Louise Dumont is a PhD student and teaching assistant at the University of Namur. She graduated from KU Leuven with an MA in linguistics and literature (English and Dutch) in 2016 and completed a Master’s degree in Germanic languages and literatures (teaching focus) at UCLouvain in 2018. She is currently working on a PhD project on the translation of Shakespeare by Pierre-Antoine de La Place in the Théâtre Anglois (1745-1749), under the supervision of Dirk Delabastita (UNamur) and Beatrijs Vanacker (KU Leuven). This project borrows concepts from Translation Studies, and more specifically the theoretical notion of translation as a form of interlingual quotation to analyse La Place’s mediating strategies to make the introduction of Shakespeare to eighteenth-century French readers possible.
Theresia Feldmann

Theresia Feldmann is postdoctoral researcher and interim lecturer at KU Leuven where she teaches German literary history and literary translation. Her research focuses on the circulation and reception of Dutch-language literature in the German language area, with a particular interest in the multilingual and multi-ethnic fringes of that area during the Habsburg era. She studied English, French and German literature at the Free University of Brussels (VUB) and the University of Nantes before obtaining her PhD in Translation Studies at KU Leuven under the supervision of Elke Brems.
Rachelle Gloudemans

Rachelle Gloudemans has obtained a Master’s degree in Italian literature and culture (2017) and has completed a Research Master in Literary Studies (2018) at the University of Amsterdam. She also holds a BA in Italian Studies (2015) and in European Studies (2015). She is currently working on a PhD project on translingualism in the works of Jewish-Italian authors, under the supervision of dr. Natalie Dupré (KU Leuven). The project borrows concepts from Translation Studies and studies on World Literature to explore how multilingual authors, born outside Italy, use the Italian language to interrogate the complicated relationships between languages, territoriality and Jewish identity in their works. Her research interests include transnational literatures, transmediality and cultural memory.
Affiliation: KU Leuven
Contact: rachelle.gloudemans@kuleuven.be
Publications
Ewoud Goethals
Ewoud Goethals (1995) studied Literature and Linguistics Dutch-English. In addition, he holds advanced master degrees in Literary Studies and Digital Humanities. Before joining CERES he worked as a catalographer at the legal deposit of the Royal Library of Belgium (KBR). Currently he is a PhD student at KU Leuven in the research group of translation and intercultural transfer (VICT) under the supervision of Elke Brems, Reine Meylaerts, and Stéphanie Vanasten (co-supervisor). He is affiliated to BELTRANS, a federal project by KU Leuven, UCLouvain and KBR about intra-Belgian literary translations 1970-2020.
Affiliation: KU Leuven
Contact: ewoud.goethals@kuleuven.be
Melanie Hacke

Melanie Hacke graduated as Master of Western Literature (English and Latin) at the University of Leuven in 2015, and as Master in Victorian Studies at the University of Exeter in 2016. Her Ph.D project ‘The Reception and Translation of Foreign Cultures in British Romantic Periodicals’ is supervised by Professor Tom Toremans (KU Leuven Campus Brussels) and Professor Tom Mole (University of Edinburgh). Responding to the relative neglect of the study of translation in Romantic (periodical) scholarship, her project analyses how the Edinburgh Review, the Quarterly Review, and the Westminster Review engage with other cultures and literatures. Through a critical comparative analysis of transfer and translation, the project investigates how the periodicals’ editorial practices reflect their ideological positions in the British literary marketplace.
Besa Hashani

Ellen Lambrechts

Ellen Lambrechts has obtained a Master’s degree in Spanish and French literature and linguistics at the University of Leuven, and studied Hispanic philology at the University of Seville. In October 2016 she started a PhD project under the supervision of Prof. dr. Erwin Snauwaert (supervisor) and Prof. dr. Nadia Lie (co-supervisor): ‘the translation and reception of the contemporary Peruvian fantastic narrative into French, Anglo-American, and Brazilian literary systems’. In particular, the project analyses how the manipulations of narrative enunciation that are characteristic of the so-called “fantástico de lenguaje” are reproduced in the different target languages, focusing not only on the translational shifts, but also on its aesthetical and ideological consequences in a transnational context.
Ella Mingazova
Ella Mingazova works on slowness in the contemporary novel. More particularly, how pace and slowness are experienced as effects during the reading of a fictional narrative. She has obtained her Master’s degree from UCLouvain in 2014 and has worked at Passa Porta in Brussels before starting her PhD at ULiège and at KU Leuven in 2017. Her broader interests include the relation between literature and nation-states and duration and ephemerality in the current cultural context of acceleration.
Affiliation: ULiège/KU Leuven
Contact: ella.mingazova@kuleuven.be
Publications
Elisa Nelissen
Elisa Nelissen is a PhD researcher under the supervision of Jack McMartin, Michaël Opgenhaffen and Luc van Doorslaer, working on the interdisciplinary project “The Circulation of Science News in the Coronavirus Era” in collaboration with the KU Leuven Institute for Media Studies. Her research focuses, among others, on how science news about COVID-19 vaccines travels from the lab to Flemish newspapers, and the translations and modifications it is subject to. Previously, Elisa worked as a press officer at Elsevier and KU Leuven and as a freelance (science) writer and editor. She obtained a BA in Applied Linguistics (English/Spanish) at KU Leuven, an MA in Book and Digital Media Studies at Leiden University and a postgraduate degree in international investigative journalism at Thomas More.
Contact: elisa.nelissen@kuleuven.be or @elisanelissen
Carmen Reisinger
After completing her MA in Comparative Literature at the University of Vienna, Carmen Reisinger was appointed at the department of English Literature at KU Leuven. Her PhD project is supervised by Prof. Dr. Raphaël Ingelbien (KU Leuven) and part of the larger project ‘Bringing the Bard Back Home? The English Translation of Foreign Shakespeare Criticism in the Long 19th Century’. Her dissertation focuses on the British translation of German critical works on Shakespeare, which formed an important part of the intellectual transfer between German-speaking and British literary scholars. Her monograph ‘Schachzüge im translatorischen Feld. Zur Rezeption von Alejo Carpentier im deutschsprachigen Verlagswesen’ was published in 2021.
Affiliation: KU Leuven
Contact: carmen.reisinger@kuleuven.be
Merel Waeyaert
Merel Waeyaert is a PhD candidate at the department of Literary Studies of KU Leuven. They obtained a Master’s degree in Historical Languages and Literature (2021) from Ghent University. During their studies they worked as a volunteer writing mentor and teaching assistant for the English Linguistics department of Ghent University. They have worked as an intern for the research group GEMS (Group for Early Modern Studies) at Ghent University, and for the Flanders Heritage Library. Merel is currently working on the project “Found in Translation: Translators and the Construction of Literary Authority in the 18th-Century Low Countries”, under the supervision of Beatrijs Vanacker (KU Leuven) and Lieke van Deinsen (KU Leuven). The aims of this project are the reappreciation of translations within the literary landscape of the Southern and Northern Netherlands, and the examination of the performativity of authorship and authority in the eighteenth century.
Affiliation: KU Leuven
Contact: merel.waeyaert@kuleuven.be
Pieter Boulogne
Pieter Boulogne (1982), PhD in Slavonic Studies, is an assistant professor of Russian literature at KU Leuven and a visiting professor of Slavonic Studies at Ghent University. Since 2017, he is a board member of the KU Leuven Centre for Translation Studies (CETRA). His main research interests lie at the crossroads of history of Russian literature, descriptive translation studies and imagology. In 2011, he published a slightly overweight dissertation in Dutch on the early Dutch critical reception and (mostly indirect) translations of Dostoevsky, under the title Het temmen van de Scyth. De vroege Nederlandse receptie van F.M. Dostoevskij (Taming the Scythian. The Early Dutch Reception of F.M. Dostoevsky). More recently, he contributed to CODL: an international network studying the circulation of Dutch literature. Once in a blue moon, he indulges in literary translation from Russian and literary criticism.
Affiliation: KU Leuven
Contact: pieter.boulogne@kuleuven.be
Publications
Personal Website
Núria Codina
Núria Codina Solà is a postdoctoral fellow at KU Leuven and the Principal Investigator of the ERC Starting Grant project “Making Migrant Voices Heard through Literature: How Collaboration Is Changing the Cultural Field” (COLLAB, 2023-2028), which looks at a wide array of collaborative practices across Europe that create spaces for literary participation of migrants. Her previous research projects centered around the role of multilingualism and refugee writing in contemporary world literature and were funded by the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO). Núria received a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Tübingen and is the author of Verflochtene Welten. Transkulturalität in den Werken von Najat El Hachmi, Pius Alibek, Emine Sevgi Özdamar und Feridun Zaimoglu (2018). She has also published in journals such as Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Research in African Literatures, and Textual Practice. Her research interests include literary multilingualism, transnational literature, collaborative writing, postcolonialism, translation theory, cultural studies and interdisciplinary approaches to migration.
Affiliation: KU Leuven
Contact: nuria.codina@kuleuven.be
Publications
Christophe Declercq

Christophe is a lecturer at KU Leuven (Brussels campus) and senior lecturer at University College London. His main research interests and activities at present have two traits. The first research theme concerns the use of language and translation technology. The use of technology is seen as a way of making information more accessible. The second research theme concerns a much more culture-related orientation, focusing on transnational history and the impact of (temporary) exile on national identity, in particular Belgian refugees in Britain 1914-1919. Together with Julian Walker Christophe manages the Languages and the First World War project. Christophe has (had) multiple involvements with the European Commission and televised media (BBC and VRT).
Affiliation: KU Leuven, University College London
Contact: christophe.declercq@kuleuven.be
Twitter: @chrisdec71 @belgianrefugees @languagesFWW
Publications
Brecht de Groote

Brecht de Groote is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Translation, Interpretation, and Communication of the University of Ghent. His research focuses on the Romantic period, extending into the eighteenth century and Victorian period; in particular, he is interested in the legacies of late-Romantic writing. Combining methods at the intersection of translation studies, literary theory, and media studies, he investigates the ways in which British culture is shaped by ideas and practices of translation and mediation, particularly as it engages with France and Germany. Brecht previously held (post)doctoral positions at the Universities of Ghent, Leuven, and Edinburgh. He has a monograph with Edinburgh University Press, Thomas De Quincey: Romanticism in Translation, and is currently working on a project on Romantic translation and misinformation.
Ben De Witte
Ben De Witte (PhD Rutgers University) teaches comparative criticism, world literature studies and translation at KU Leuven campus Leuven. His research interest are in literary translation and in comparative approaches to the study of modernism, in particular in the area of drama and performance, and gender and sexuality. Ben has published research in Modern Drama, Cahier voor Literatuurwetenschap, Theatre Research International, and Vooys, and has written book and performance reviews for TTR, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, and Theatre Journal. He recently co-translated (with João Nemi Neto) João Silvério Trevisan’s novel Em nome do desejo for Columbia University’s Sundial House: Latin American and Iberian Literature in Translation.
Affiliation: KU Leuven
Contact: ben.dewitte@kuleuven.be
Publications
Tamara Gosta

Reine Meylaerts
Reine Meylaerts is Professor of Comparative Literature and Translation Studies at KU Leuven where she teaches courses on European Literature, Comparative Literature and Translation and Plurilingualism in Literature. She was director of CETRA (Centre for Translation Studies) from 2006-2014 and is now board member. Her current research interests concern translation policy, intercultural mediation and transfer in multilingual cultures, past and present. She is the author of numerous articles and chapters on these topics. She is also review editor of Target. International Journal of Translation Studies. She was coordinator of 2011-2014: FP7-PEOPLE-2010-ITN: TIME: Translation Research Training: An integrated and intersectoral model for Europe. She is former Secretary General (2004-2007) of the European Society for Translation Studies (EST) and Chair of the Doctoral Studies Committee of EST.
Affiliation: KU Leuven
Contact: reine.meylaerts@kuleuven.be
Publications
Francis Mus
Francis Mus is Assistant Professor of French and Translation Studies in the Department of Translation, Interpreting and Communication at the University of Ghent. His research interests include literary translation studies (Francophone literatures; literature(s) in Belgium; translation from French to Dutch); translation and music (Leonard Cohen, popular music, classical music); translation and multimodality; translation and visibility (ethics of translation); literary multilingualism in/and translation.
His monograph The Demons of Leonard Cohen (2020) was awarded the Literary Prize of the Province of East Flanders and was a finalist for the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards. He also serves on the editorial board of JoSTrans and the scientific committee of the Book Series ‘Truchements’ (University of Liège).
Affiliation: UGent
Contact: francis.mus@ugent.be
Publications
Erwin Snauwaert

Beatrijs Vanacker
Beatrijs Vanacker is an FWO postdoctoral fellow at KU Leuven, where she teaches courses on French and comparative literature and literary translation. Her research interests include early modern prose fiction (focus on 18th century), mostly from a transcultural perspective, pseudotranslation and network analysis of (women) writers’ correspondences. She has been a visiting fellow at LMU München, Augsburg University and McGill University and has published on literary translation, (transcultural) poetics of the novel and women writers’ networks. She is a member of the executive board of the Dutch-Belgian Society for Eighteenth Century Studies and assistant editor of the online journal Interférences littéraires / Literaire interferenties.
Affiliation: KU Leuven
Contact: beatrijs.vanacker@kuleuven.be
Publications
Jan Van Coillie

Walter Verschueren
Visiting Scholars
Carmen Moreno Paz (Spring 2019)
Carmen Moreno Paz is a visiting scholar at CERES from February to April 2020, where she will be conducting a part of her postdoctoral research after completing her PhD dissertation in November 2019. Her PhD project, carried out at Universidad de Córdoba (Spain), was titled “The translation of fictional particulars in fantasy literature: irrealia in J. R. R. Tolkien’s works and their translation into French and Spanish”. It aims at describing the linguistic features of lexical units used to name fictional concepts in fantasy literature, focusing mainly on J. R. R. Tolkien’s work, and how they can be translated into French and Spanish. By creating a database of all the fictional concepts in Tolkien’s work, quantitative and qualitative results could be obtained that allowed to draw conclusions on the dynamic concept of equivalence and the influence of the choice of certain strategies in the function and final result of the translation of irrealia.
Apart from her research, she has also worked as a Spanish teacher at Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint Denis and at several establishments belonging to Académie de Paris between 2015-2019. In 2018, she also carried out a visiting scholarship at École Supérieure d’Interprètes et de Traducteurs (Paris) and she has completed two master’s degrees in literary translation (Universidad de Córdoba) and translation and new technologies (Universidad Internacional Menéndez Pelayo).
Affiliation: Universidad de Córdoba (Spain)
Contact: l02mopam@uco.es
Publications
Sandra Llopart (Autumn 2019)
Sandra Llopart studied English Philology at the University of Barcelona, and obtained a Master’s degree in Translation Studies at the Pompeu Fabra University. In 2017, she started the PhD project “Translation and Reception of African American Women’s Literature in Spain” under the supervision of Dr. Luis Pegenaute (Pompeu Fabra University). The project investigates the factors that have led to the translation and dissemination of the works of African American female authors in Spain, and analyzes the translation of Black English in the Spanish versions of Beloved (1993) and The Color Purple (1982). Sandra has joined the CERES team as a visiting scholar for a three-month research stay until December 2019.
Affiliation: Pompeu Fabra University
Contact: sandra.llopart@upf.edu
Publications
Oscar Jansson (2019)
Oscar Jansson obtained a dual BA, in English and Scandinavian Literature, from Lund University and Linnaeus University in 2010, and an MA in Comparative Literature from Lund University in 2012. He is also an alumni of the School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell University. Oscar is currently a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature at Lund University, with a project on the international reception of Graham Greene. His research mainly concerns how Greene’s writing reflects the relationship between two central developments in Western 20th century literature: the rise of Modernism to cultural dominance, and the increasingly transnational and intermedial structure of the Western literary sphere.
In the Spring of 2019, Oscar is a visiting scholar at CERES, with a grant from the Royal Academy of Arts and Letters. He has published on Swedish national romanticism, satire in animated TV shows, and ideological critique in contemporary American novels. He is a member of the KompLitt research group at the Centre for Languages and Literature at Lund University, and is also project leader and co-editor of a project called The Geschlecht Complex: Essays on Gender, Genre and Ontology, with colleagues from Columbia, NYU and Penn State.
Affiliation: Lund University
Contact: oscar.jansson@litt.lu.se
Yaohong Yin (2019 – 2020)
Yaohong Yin obtained a Master’s degree in English-Chinese Translation at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies and is now a PhD candidate at Tongji University. As an international scholar at CERES, she works on the reception of Oscar Wilde’s aestheticism in China. The project aims to trace the course of transmission of Oscar Wilde’s works in China and lay special emphasis on how Chinese people received his aestheticism in the past 100 plus years.
Affiliation: Tongij University
Contact: yaohong.yin@student.kuleuven.be