Xiaoyan Tan
The 6th European Colloquium on Gender and Translation: Encounters between Intersectional Feminisms and Translation & Interpreting July 2025
Why has this activity been useful for your development or career progression and how this will impact your current or future work?
Presenting my paper, Rewriting and Reframing the Feminist Text: A Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis (later revised as Translating Feminist Discourse in China: Negotiation, Contestation, and State Intervention), attending the conference has been highly valuable for both my academic development and career progression. Since the paper is closely related to my PhD research, the opportunity to share my work with an audience of peers and senior scholars not only allowed me to gain valuable feedback for this paper but also receive inspiring insights and feedback for my PhD project. I benefited greatly from the feedback provided by both professors and fellow doctoral researchers, which helped me to identify strengths as well as areas for refinement in my approach. The interdisciplinary insights I gained from other scholars’ research have also inspired me to consider to adopt a more integrated and interdisciplinary approach to my research writing.
Importantly, the conference had a direct impact on the development of my work. Based on the constructive critique and feedback I received, I further revised my paper and was subsequently able to submit it to Babel, a leading journal in my field indexed in SSCI and A&HCI, where it is currently under peer review. This experience has reinforced academic dialogue and enhanced my confidence. If this paper could be published in this journal, it would be highly beneficial for my future job search, and I would be glad to acknowledge the Society & Culture Spotlight funding that has supported me in attending this conference.
The conference theme on feminism was particularly relevant to my research. Attending keynote lectures and peer presentations deepened my understanding of current debates in feminist studies and encouraged me to situate my own research within a broader interdisciplinary context. Engaging in conversations with other participants also enabled me to build academic connections and to reflect on how similar issues are approached from different disciplinary and geographical perspectives. In future, I plan to integrate more feedback at paper drafting and to continue engaging actively with scholarly communities, which I believe will significantly strengthen both the quality and visibility of my research.
Have you learnt new concepts or tools outside of your usual discipline?
Yes, I have learned a number of new concepts and tools outside of my usual discipline, which have enriched both my methodological and theoretical perspectives. For example, I was introduced to digital tools for working with corpus data and for managing subtitling tasks, which opened up possibilities for applying more empirical, data-driven approaches to translation studies. I also learned about how artificial intelligence can be more effectively integrated into translation research, particularly in relation to multilingual processing and audio visual translation, which is an area I had not previously explored in depth.
In terms of conceptual insights, the conference exposed me to important interdisciplinary frameworks that broadened my understanding of feminist scholarship. I learned about ecofeminism, which links women’s issues to wider social and ecological concerns, particularly environmental degradation, and this helped me to see how feminist discourse can intersect with sustainability debates. I also engaged with ideas around integrated feminism, which considers how social, political, racial, and cultural factors shape and compound women’s experiences of inequality. These interdisciplinary perspectives have encouraged me to think more critically about the intersectional dimensions of my own research and to consider how my analysis of feminist discourse in China can be connected to broader global debates. Overall, these tools and concepts have expanded my skill set and theoretical outlook, equipping me to conduct more nuanced and interdisciplinary research in the future.
Did you identify any opportunities for future collaboration?
Yes, I was able to identify several opportunities for future collaboration during the conference. By engaging in discussions with peers and senior academics working on feminism, translation, and interdisciplinary approaches, I discovered overlapping research interests that could lead to joint projects or publications. For instance, I connected with researchers who are also exploring the relationship between feminist discourse and translation practices, and we discussed the possibility of co-writing papers or co-organizing a panel at a future conference.
I also spoke with participants who specialize in areas adjacent to my own, such as institutional translation and ecofeminist theory, and we considered how our expertise could be combined in interdisciplinary research. These conversations not only expanded my academic network but also gave me insight into how collaborative work could enrich my PhD project by introducing new perspectives and methods. The conference confirmed for me the value of collaboration across disciplinary and cultural boundaries, and I expect that some of the connections I made will develop into concrete opportunities for co-authorship, panel participation, or research networking in the near future.
