Lecturer in Translation Studies, University of Edinburgh, UK

Expertise: Translation and religion, translation of sacred texts, South Asia, Tamil, translation and postcolonialism

Hephzibah Israel’s research focuses on literary and sacred translations in the South Asian context. She currently leads an AHRC-funded collaborative research project, under the AHRC Translating Cultures theme, which examines the role of translation in the movement of religious concepts across languages and the ways in which this impacts religious conversion and autobiographical writing about conversion experiences. She has authored several articles and her monograph, entitled Religious Transactions in Colonial South India (2011), studies translations of the Tamil Bible as an object of cultural transfer within intersecting religious, literary and social contexts. She is guest editing a special issue on Religion and Translation for the journal Religion (with Matthias Frenz) and a special issue on Indian traditions of life writing on religious conversion for the journal South Asia (with John Zavos).