Esperança Bielsa is Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and Adjunct Professor at Shanghai International Studies University.

She holds an MA and a PhD in Sociology from the University of Glasgow. Before joining the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona with a Ramón y Cajal Fellowship in 2010, she was Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Leicester. She has also held positions as Research Fellow at Warwick University’s Centre for Translation and Comparative Cultural Studies, and as Research Fellow and Sociology Tutor at the University of Glasgow. In 2015 she was Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the Department of Sociology of the University of Sussex.

Her research interests are in the areas of cultural sociology, social theory, globalisation and cosmopolitanism.

She is the author of A Translational Sociology (2023), Cosmopolitanism and Translation (2016) and The Latin American Urban Crónica (2006), and co-author (with Antonio Aguilera) of Benjamin y la traducción (2024) and (with Susan Bassnett) of Translation in Global News (2009). She is editor of The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Media (2022), co-editor (with Dionysios Kapsaskis) of The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Globalization (2021), and (with Christopher Hughes) of Globalization, Political Violence and Translation (2009). Her article ‘Cosmopolitanism as Translation’, published in Cultural Sociology 8(4), 2014, was the winner of the British Sociological Association/ Sage Prize for Innovation and Excellence 2015.

She is editor of the book series ‘Translation, Politics and Society’ (Routledge).

She is a member of the International Advisory Board of the Baker Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies (Shanghai International Studies University) and of the research groups Centre d’Estudis sobre Cultura, Política i Societat of the University of Barcelona and GIR Traducción, Ideología, Cultura of the University of Salamanca.

Contact details

Dra. Esperança Bielsa
Departament de Sociologia
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Edifici B
08193 Bellaterra
(Barcelona)
Spain
Esperanza.Bielsa@uab.cat