Lee Purvis

My research centres around translation, memory and place, with a focus on contemporary Spain, its urban spaces, national legislation, literary repertoires and cultural institutions. It is supported by a relational ethics of care, ethnographic and digital fieldwork, and frameworks for monumental and travelling memory, whereby memory is considered a constant process which can only be targeted and caught by communicative acts. As such, memory, place and collective texts bring together theoretical models from translation and narratology enabling critical interrogation of spatial and cultural practices. In this sense, translation encompasses all acts of communication which is neither innocent nor exempt from multiplicity.

My doctoral research examines issues of translation and memory that arise in archival settings in the city of Salamanca (Spain). The research is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK) through the Northern Bridge Doctoral Training Partnership.

My primary research interests are in translation and sites of memory, particularly related to monuments, archives and narratives surrounding how Spain’s Francoist past is repurposed and remembered in the present. I am also interested in intralingual, legal, literary, and multimodal translation in relation to cultural memory, collective authorship, narrative voice, storytelling, silences, witnessing, and place-writing.

I am an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. I currently teach at the Centre for Translation and Interpreting on the postgraduate modules Meaning, Sense and Translation (MML7033) and Literary Translation (MML7024). My e-mail address is lpurvis02@qub.ac.uk