Oxford Translates
at St Edmund Hall
An online literary translation summer school
About us
Oxford Translates is an online translation summer school hosted by St Edmund Hall, one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford. The summer school is run by Ros Schwartz and Holly Langstaff.
The summer school moved to St Edmund Hall in 2026. The summer school was previously hosted by the University of Bristol (Bristol Translates), the University of Warwick (Warwick Translates) and City St George’s, University of London (Translate at City).
Over the past four decades Ros Schwartz has translated over 100 fiction and non-fiction titles from French. In 2010, she published a new translation of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince, and her recent translated works include Mireille Gansel’s Translation as Transhumance and Selfies by Sylvie Weil. She is one of the team re-translating Georges Simenon’s works for Penguin Classics; 2022 saw the publication of her translation of Max Lobe’s Does Snow Turn a Person White Inside? (HopeRoad) and 2023 her translation of Simone Weil’s The Need For Roots (Penguin Classics) was released. She recently published her translation of Ryota Kurumado’s manga version of Camus’ The Outsider (Penguin Classics). 2025 saw her translation of Jacqueline Harpman’s I Who Have Never Known Men become a global bestseller, and 2026 sees the publication of her latest translation: Khalid Lyamlahy’s Venice Requiem.
Ros gives talks and masterclasses around the world and is a Royal Literary Fund Fellow. In 2009 she was made a Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, and in 2017 she was the recipient of the UK Institute of Translation and Interpreting’s John Sykes Memorial Prize for Excellence.
Holly is a Lecturer in French and Fellow by Special Election at St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford, where she teaches French literature and language. She published her first monograph, Art and Technology in Maurice Blanchot, in 2023. She is currently working on a new project on working-class writers and representations of working-class experiences in twentieth-century French literature. She is involved in several translation-related initiatives: she runs the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation; she helped to establish the Anthea Bell Prize for Young Translators at the Queen’s College Translation Exchange, and she has been involved in the summer school since 2019, becoming co-director alongside Ros Schwartz in 2022.
Wes Williams is Professor of French Literature at the University of Oxford and a Fellow in Modern Languages at St Edmund Hall. His books include Pilgrimage and Narrative in the French Renaissance: ‘The Undiscovered Country’ (OUP, 1999), and Monsters and their Meanings in Early Modern Culture; Mighty Magic (OUP, 2012). He is currently working on a study of the long, enduring history of ‘voluntary servitude’, and the medical, legal, and more-than-human reach of the power afforded to the faculty of the imagination in the early modern period.
He also writes, translates, and directs for the theatre, working both with established companies and theatre makers such as Ariane Mnouchkine, the Théâtre du Soleil, Katie Mitchell, Emily Woof, Ed Gaughan, the Almeida, the National Theatre, and the RSC, and a wide range of local and community-based theatre groups. A former Director of TORCH (The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities), he has a long-standing interest in fostering translation as a form of cultural collaboration, one that can amplify, diversify, and transform our collective intellectual and social resources.
Coming soon…
Jean Franco is an anthropologist, writer and filmmaker with a focus on the Islamic and Indian Ocean world. In addition to his studies, he continues to work in publishing and translation, contributing to Saqi Books, ArabLit, Qisetna and FARSANG. Jean has also been involved in academic mentoring and university access programs.