The tentative title of my dissertation is “Conference interpreters as critical intercultural mediators”. The project lies at the intersection of three disciplines: interpreting studies (under the larger umbrella of translation studies); intercultural studies, inspired specifically by critical and postcolonial theories; and to a lesser extent, culture pedagogy in the field of language teaching and translation and interpreting studies. I am interested in how current conference interpreters perceive and practice interculturality, as opposed to purely linguistic aspects of interpreting.
The Thesis Seminar will focus on the following aspects: first, I will offer a brief summary of the motivation underpinning my PhD work, the disciplinary context where it is located, and the research gap and main research questions. Secondly, I will focus on a terminological/conceptual debate on the notions of ‘culture’ and ‘the intercultural’. Finally, I will deal with selected methodological aspects of the PhD project, illustrating them with examples of analysis from the empirical data.