Research

Having retired from the University of Manchester in 2015, I am now Affiliate Professor with the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare Education (SHE) at the University of Oslo, Norway.

I was Principal Investigator on the four-year AHRC-funded project, Genealogies of Knowledge: The Evolution and Contestation of Concepts across Time and Space (GoK), which ended in April 2020. Its agenda is now being further developed and extended to other disciplinary areas in collaboration with other research groups by the Genealogies of Knowledge Research Network. The GoK Network is co-coordinated by Jan Buts, Henry Jones and myself. A summary of the GOK project can be accessed here. Details of and links to some of its outputs can be accessed here.

An earlier research project (2013-2015), Translating the Egyptian Revolution, involved examining the use of translation, specifically subtitling, by various activist groups connected with the Egyptian Revolution. The project was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. It concluded with an international conference held in Cairo in March 2015, The Only Thing Worth Globalizing Is Disssent – Translation and the Many Languages of Resistance, an article published in The Translator in April 2016, and an edited collection published the same year, Translating Dissent: Voices from and with the Egyptian Revolution, which won the Inttranews Linguists of the Year Award for 2015.

The Translating the Egyptian Revolution project built on and extended my earlier work on the role of translation and interpreting in protest movements, and more broadly in mediating political conflict. Relevant publications include the following:

• Baker, Mona (2013) ‘Translation as an Alternative Space for Political Action’, Social Movement Studies: Journal of Social, Cultural and Political Protest 12(1) : 23-47.
• Baker, Mona (2010) ‘Translation and Activism: Emerging Patterns of Narrative Community’, in Maria Tymoczko (ed.) Translation, Resistance, Activism, Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 23-41.
• Baker, Mona (2009) ‘Resisting State Terror : Theorizing Communities of Activist Translators and Interpreters’, in Esperanza Bielsa and Christopher W. Hughes (eds) Globalisation, Political Violence and Translation,  Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 222-242.

Also of relevance and connected to this specific project:

• ‘Translation and Solidarity in the Century with New Future‘, in John Ødemark and Eivind Engebretsen (eds) Challenging Medical Knowledge Translation, Special issue of Humanities and Social Sciences Communication. Volume 6(23), 2020.
• ‘The Prefigurative Politics of Translation in Place-based Movements of Protest: Subtitling in the Egyptian Revolution‘, The Translator 22(1): 1-21.
• Translating Dissent: Voices from and with the Egyptian Revolution, edited volume published by Routledge, 2016.
• ‘Beyond the Spectacle: Translation and Solidarity in Contemporary Protest Movements’, in Mona Baker (ed.) Translating Dissent: Voices from and with the Egyptian Revolution, 2016, London & New York: Routledge, 1-18.
• Video of Lecture at the American University in Cairo, 9 March 2015, titled Subtitling in the Context of Contemporary Political Activism
• A recording of a workshop on activist subtitling, organised by Mosireen in April 2014.
• Video of the First Annual Martha Cheung Memorial Lecture, titled The Prefigurative Politics of Volunteer Subtitling in the Egyptian Revolution, May 2014
• Interview with Free Word.
• Collection of videos from the Globalising Dissent conference, held in Cairo 6-8 March 2015: Trailer, Special Panel on Journalism as Translation organized by Mada Masr, Workshop on Filming Revolution, and Keynotes by Samah Selim, Leil-Zahra Mortada, Khalid Abdallah, Brandon Jourdan, Cristina Flesher Fominaya and Amro Ali.
• A review of the conference by Ahmed Refaat, published by Mada Masr

And on translation/interpreting and conflict:

• Baker, Mona (2010) ‘Interpreters and Translators in the War Zone: Narrated and Narrators’, The Translator: Studies in Intercultural Communication 16(2) : 197-222.
• Baker, Mona (2010) ‘Narratives of Terrorism and Security: ‘Accurate’ Translations, Suspicious Frames‘, Critical Studies on Terrorism 3(3) : 347-364.
• Baker, Mona (2008) ‘Ethics of Renarration: Mona Baker Is Interviewed by Andrew Chesterman’, Cultus 1(1) : 10-33.
• Baker, Mona (2008) ‘I’adat T’ateer al-Siraa’ fi-ltargama (Reframing Conflict in Translation)’, trans. Hazem Azmy, Fusul 74: 94-116.
• Baker, Mona (2007) ‘Reframing Conflict in Translation’, Social Semiotics 17(2) : 151-169.
• Baker, Mona (2006) Translation and Conflict: A Narrative Account, London & New York: Routledge.