Introduction
I graduated from Worcester College, Oxford with a BA in German and Philosophy in 2019 (First Class), before completing my MA in Translation Studies at the University of Sheffield (Distinction). After my MA, I spent a year working at a sixth form college in an outreach / pastoral capacity, before returning to Oxford in 2021 to begin my DPhil in Medieval and Modern Languages, for which I was successfully examined in February 2025. I have also previously held a Stipendiary Lectureship post at Somerville College, Oxford.
Teaching
I teach a variety of papers on the undergraduate German course. I offer a broad range of Paper VIII modules including ranging from Goethe, the buergerliches Trauerspiel, the ‘Postwar Restoration Frenzy’ in Austria, and Representations of Trauma.
I also teach the Prelims poetry and prose/film papers, and am particularly passionate about teaching Unseen Translation from German at all levels. Recently I held a feminist translation micro-conference with second years, in which students workshopped German extracts together and presented their findings in the form of lightning talks. Other recent classes have focused on the translation of wordplay, children’s books, prose poetry, and on translation technologies such as subtitling and simultaneous interpreting.
As part of my teaching, I have been awarded Associate Fellowship of the HEA.
Research
My doctoral research examined English translations of a selection of German language novels, from Irmgard Keun’s Das kunstseidene Mädchen to Sasha Marianna Salzmann’s Außer sich. I focused on consciousness narratives whose authors have attempted to (and sometimes struggled to) articulate the mind of a gendered subject, and investigated how, and how successfully, these attempts have been translated into English.
Recently I have turned to investigate comparative translation analysis as a methodological approach, particularly in translated works which allow us to hear minoritized and marginalized voices.
Publications
available from https://www.mod-langs.ox.ac.uk/people/isabel-parkinson