Dr Richard Mansell

I am an internationally-recognised linguist and translation studies scholar, and a native-equivalent speaker of Spanish and Catalan. In 2025 I was elected to the Institut d'Estudis Catalans, the Catalan national academy,  and my professional activity focuses on mutually beneficial relationships between education, research and non-academic contexts.

I always aim to communicate my passion for languages, cultures and language learning to students and wider audiences and to stimulate the same in them, a commitment borne out by regular nominations for university teaching awards and consistently excellent feedback from students and audiences at public events. My research leads new approaches within translation studies in collaboration with international colleagues, and arises from close collaboration with industry and non-academic partners – translators, publishers, cultural organisations and more. The quality and relevance of my work has led to it being featured in specialist and mainstream international press, and I have been invited to deliver high-profile keynote lectures in the UK and Europe. I have judged some of the country’s most prestigious prizes for translation, and my own translation work has been praised in the media and recently won two Institut Ramon Llull translation awards.

Biography:

After my BA (Hons) in Hispanic Studies and Catalan Philology from the University of Sheffield and Llicenciatura in Catalan Philology from the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB), I gained my PhD on the topic of translators’ decision-making processes from the University of Sheffield, with joint supervision from the UIB. Before joining Exeter in 2006, I was Teaching Fellow in Catalan at Sheffield, and then Lecturer in Spanish at UWE Bristol. Since then, I founded and directed the MA Translation at Exeter (2008-2016), building on the previous MA Applied Translation and MA Literary Translation.

Research supervision:

I regularly supervise doctoral students, and am always keen to hear from applicants with innovative proposals in translation studies, especially relating to the translated literature market, translation and publishing, translation in the built environment, and translation in Spanish and Catalan contexts. There is a lot of information on PhD study (and the application process) at Exeter here.