About

About Me

Socio- and multilinguist, translator, teacher, writer and visual/textile artist, both my academic and artistic work focuses on points of connection, and explores memory, movement and longing. Although much can be lost in translation, I am seeking to map the connective tissue which holds us all together.

I am interested in that most vital relationship between emotion and language: how emotions change across multiple languages, and how those languages impact the emotions we experience in turn. 

I am fascinated by those uncomfortable in-between borderlands between states of being, whether psychological, creative, linguistic or geographical. In the awkward, almost-but-not-quite period before normalisation occurs, much can be revealed about the inner workings of our minds.

My most recent work explored how the different linguistic behaviours of the Tibetan diaspora in Paris help speakers to adapt to their new culture (through the use of code switching), while maintaining important links with their former country (through the continued use of untranslatable terms). I highlight the key mechanism of both language and emotion which underlies migrant attitudes towards integration, and how a healthy emotional investment in the different languages of immigrant communities is an invaluable tool for creating humane and workable immigration policies.

I am currently working on a number of projects, including a monograph on the importance of untranslatable terms; an exploration of how the highly emotional landscapes created by British Asian DJs in London can help break down old colonial divides; the experience of synaesthesia by multilinguals as they migrate and settle into new cultures; and the impact of multiple languages on dissociative disorders.