Désirée Schyns is emerita associate professor in translation practice, translation studies and francophone literature at Ghent University's Faculty of Arts and Philosophy. After studying French language and literature and Theatre Studies in Utrecht, she worked as a literary translator, editor and literary journalist based in Amsterdam. In 1998, she moved to Ghent. She translated works by Malika Mokeddem, Nancy Huston, Sarah Kofman, Yoko Tawada and, more recently, Marcel Proust, Hélène Cixous and Bruno Latour. She received her PhD from the University of Amsterdam in 2007 for a dissertation on the representation of the Algerian Independence War in fiction by Francophone Algerian authors. Her research focuses in particular on the translation of multilingualism in a postcolonial context, the translation of memory in Francophone literature, on (the translation of) mémoire littéraire and on translated poetry. Publications in this area concern in particular the monograph La mémoire littéraire de la guerre d'Algérie dans la fiction algérienne francophone (2012) and articles in books and journals on the literary representation of this decolonisation war. In addition, her literary translation work often forms the basis for research. Schyns is co-editor of, among others, Denken over poëzie en vertalen: De dichter Cees Nooteboom in vertaling (2018), and Translating Memories of Violent Pasts: Memory Studies and Translation Studies in Dialogue (2023). She is co-editor of the translation journal Filter in which she publishes regularly, and coordinated the research group TRACE until her retirement.
