Esperança Bielsa’s interdisciplinary work draws upon sociology, critical theory and translation studies.
Her current research seeks to respond to the deep and interconnected crises that have emerged in the context of the climate emergency through an investigation of the role of culture and the articulation of a critique that identifies its central significance for dealing with the challenges of the present.
Recent research has dealt with the cultural and political dimensions of translation as a social relationship across linguistic difference, and the theoretical and methodological implications of a translational approach for sociology. Such research reexamines sociological knowledge through a focus on linguistic multiplicity and translation, as ordinary and ubiquitous social practices in a deeply interconnected world. This is the subject of her most recent books, Benjamin y la traducción (2024) and A Translational Sociology (2023), as well as of a research project entitled ‘Political Translation’ (2020-2024), which examined translation practices in the semi-periphery of the international academic field.
Older research explored the significance of translation for an understanding of contemporary cosmopolitanism and its role in the context of globalization in general and the globalization of news in particular, and the Latin American urban crónica as a hybrid genre of the contact zone between popular and legitimate culture. Representative publications are the books Cosmopolitanism and Translation (2016), Translation in Global News (2009, with S. Bassnett) and The Latin American Urban Crónica (2006).
Supervision interests
Esperança Bielsa is interested in supervising research students in the fields of cultural sociology, translation and social theory.