Dr Veronique Lane
Lecturer in French Studies and Comparative LiteratureProfile
I have been lecturing at Lancaster University since 2017.
Prior to my current post, I have been Visiting Assistant Professor at Wesleyan University in the US, and Postdoctoral Research Fellow funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).
At Lancaster, I teach translation theory and practice as well as mental health at UG and PG level, I supervise MA and PhD students in these areas, and am an active member of the Health Hub. I also serve as Dissertations Convenor for the School of Global Affairs and as Lead Reviewer for the Faculty Research Ethics Committee.
As part of my engagement activities, I am chairing bi-weekly support sessions for caregivers of people living with schizophrenia in partnership with the Schizophrenia & Psychosis Action Alliance (S&PAA).
I have edited and contributed to the very first book theorizing "literary back-translation", with collaborators from the US to the UK, France, Italy, Turkey and China (Edinburgh University Press, 2025). I am also the creator and admin of the website Literary Back-Translation: if you know a literary back-translation which isn't in the online catalogue, please get in touch through the contact form! All contributions are gratefuly acknowledged on the website.
My current research activities include workshops designed with mental health practicioners to improve the cognition of patients living with schizophrenia, as well as the S&PAA support sessions I'm leading for caregivers, and the publication of my second monograph on translation, cognition and mental health (also forthcoming from Edinburgh University Press).
Research Grants
2012-14: Postdoctoral Fellowship, awarded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC, $80,000)
Additional Information
I convene the undergraduate final-year dissertation module, and have supervised several MA dissertations and translation projects.
I am currently co-supervising three PhD theses, on translation and the phenomenology of reading, on translation in video games, and on AI translation and mental health.
Research Overview
Véronique carries out research in the pragmatics of translation, cognitive studies, and medical humanities.
Recent publications include two journal special issues she has edited for L'Esprit Créateur (Johns Hopkins, 2018) and Translation and Literature (Edinburgh UP, 2020).
She has also edited the first book on "literary back-translation", in collaboration with scholars from the US to the UK, France, Italy, Turkey, and China. Her own contributions in the book include a substantial introduction theorizing literary back-translation and delineating its ethical and philosophical implications, as well as a double chapter, "Theorizing Back-Translation: From Antoine Berman on Retranslation to the Three Layers of The Monk" (Edinburgh UP; in press).
Her second monograph, Literary Translation and Mental health, offers a comparative analysis of the translation processes of seven modernist writers-translators with lived experience of mental ill health - Friedrich Hölderlin, Gérard de Nerval, Virginia Woolf, Marcel Proust, T.S. Eliot, H.D. and Antonin Artaud - and theorizes translation as a powerful form of introspection impacting identity formation and cognition.
Her current research project investigates the therapeutic value of the translation process for NHS patients on the autism-schizophrenia spectrum.
PhD Supervision Interests
Medical Humanities, Pragmatics of Translation, translation theory and practice, narratives of illness, lived experiences of mental ill health, autism-schizophrenia spectrum.
Translation as an Empirical Process: From Modernist Translation to Contemporary Transfiction
Invited talk
Antonin Artaud’s Therapeutic Experiences of Translation
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
Translation, Modernism, and Madness: The Case of Antonin Artaud
Invited talk
Antonin Artaud, from Mental Breakdown to Modernist Breakthrough
Invited talk
Paris Interzone: The Transcultural Beat Generation (Collaboration, Publication, Translation)
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
Book Launch: The French Genealogy of The Beat Generation
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar
The Anachronistic Fate of Modern French Drama: The Theatre of the Absurd Upstaged by The Theatre of Cruelty
Invited talk
La littérature et le cinéma français aux sources de la Beat Generation
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar
L'incantation littéraire: les formes d'une force
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
Postdoctoral Research Fellowship
Fellowship awarded competitively
- FASS Health Hub