Rita Wilson

Rita Wilson is Professor in Translation Studies in the School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics and Interim Director of the Monash Intercultural Lab.

Before joining Monash University in 2005, I taught at the University of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg) and the University of Melbourne.

I have long-standing research interests in women’s writing, translation studies and transcultural narrative practices. My current research sits at the interface of migrant cultural studies, translation and intercultural studies. Focusing on the complexities of cultural contact, I investigate the relationship between language, place, mobility and the construction of cultural identities. My work contributes to a growing strand of research in Translation Studies that explores the connection between translation and migration. The marked visibility of migration phenomena in the contemporary world has led to increased attention to the centrality of language and (self-)translation when discussing topics such as citizenship; social inclusion and exclusion; the representation of individual and collective cultural identities; the dynamic process of settlement. My recent publications relate to various aspects of identity and culture in migratory contexts, including cultural mediation, intercultural competence and transcultural creative practices.

With Loredana Polezzi, I am co-editor of The Translator, a leading international journal in Translation Studies. I am also the Academic Co-Director of the Monash-Warwick Migration, Identity, Translation Research Network. 

Since joining Monash, my supervisory expertise and research areas have attracted enquiries from a wide range of potential PhD candidates and, to date, I have successfully supervised 31 postgraduate students to completion across two disciplinary areas: Italian Studies and Translation Studies.

In 2015, I was the winner of Dean’s Award for Excellence in Graduate Research Supervision, Faculty of Arts. 

My current supervision interests include:

• Translation, Migration and Social Inclusion; Self-Translation; Literary Translation; Cultural Identities; Intercultural Studies
• Gender and Literary Culture; Women's Writing
• Contemporary Italian Literature and Culture

Recently completed PhD theses include

• Re-imagining the Italian South: Subjectivity and Migration in Contemporary Literature and Cinema
• Reading literature of the Vietnamese diaspora in translation: a 'transdiasporic' approach
• The Effects of Translation on Performance: Translating Rhythm and Gesture in Two Plays by David Mence
• A Grammar of God: Translation, Grammar and Memory in the Arte y reglas de la lengua tagala (1610)
• Translation in Japanese museums: a study of multimodal linguistic landscape
• Translating Neighbours: history, communication and translation in the Australian-Indonesian relationship
• Texts, Paratexts, and Contexts: A Comparative Study of English Translations of the Classic Chinese Novel Jin Ping Mei
• Revelation and Equivalence: A Methodology for the Translation of Sacred-Texts; as applied to the Tiqqunim of the Zohar