Sophie Stevens

Sophie's primary research interests are Latin American theatre, translation and performance. Her PhD, completed in 2016, investigated key questions of performability, playability and translatability to explore the creative process of the translation of dramatic texts from Spanish into English.
Her current research builds upon this work to investigate contemporary female playwrights from Uruguay as agents of cultural change. She is a theatre practitioner with a keen interest in education and an essential part of her research involves developing methodologies for theatre translation workshops to allow secondary students to develop tools for cultural inquiry and creativity in language learning.
The translation of dramatic texts is a fundamental part of her research and her English translations have been presented at the Out of the Wings Festival of Play Readings; in 2017, Ready or Not (Punto y Coma) by Estela Golovchenko and in 2016, Dancing Alone Every Night (Bailando sola cada noche) by Raquel Diana.

Sophie graduated with BA French and Hispanic Studies (first class honours) from King’s College London in 2009. She was also awarded the Associate of King’s College (AKC) and the Von Schlippenbach Prize for outstanding achievement at undergraduate level in the Department of Spanish & Latin American Studies. During her degree she studied abroad at the Université Cergy-Pontoise in France and participated in the British Council English Language Assistantship scheme in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In 2010 she completed her AHRC-funded MA Spanish and Latin American Studies at King’s. She then spent two years working in Higher Education Administration in the field of Study Abroad. 

She completed her AHRC-funded PhD entitled Uruguayan Theatre in Translation: Performability, Mobility and Intercultural Dialogue at King's in 2016 and undertook research visits to  the Universidad de la República, Uruguay (2013) and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2014). As a Graduate Teaching Assistant she taught on a range of cultural studies modules in the Department of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. In 2016-2017 she held a Teaching Fellowship at the University of Warwick where she developed and delivered an innovative translation programme for Hispanic Studies students.