Role
Hannah Klimas is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Linguistics at NTU.
Career overview
Hannah completed her undergraduate degree in German and Russian at the University of St Andrews in 2018, which included a year spent working as a British Council Foreign Language Assistant in Lübeck, Germany and a semester of study at St Petersburg State University in Russia.
In 2020, she completed a Master’s degree in Translation Studies at Durham University. This included a research dissertation on the benefits of applying a sociolinguistic approach to the translation of Mikhail Bulgakov’s civil war play Beg for a British audience, drawing on systemic-functional linguistics and critical discourse analysis.
Following this, Hannah completed her PhD in Translation Studies at the University of Leeds in 2025, where she explored the role of the translator in British and American staged productions of the works of Mikhail Bulgakov. During her time at Leeds, Hannah also taught on undergraduate modules in Beginner’s Russian and Comparative Literature, and on a postgraduate module on the MA in Applied Translation Studies course.
One of the themes of Hannah’s doctoral research was the connection between the language used to describe translators and the (re)construction of their identity throughout the process of moving from page to stage. This led to her current role as a postdoctoral research associate in linguistics at NTU, where she continues to expand on her research in sociolinguistics, moving into the area of language as cultural heritage.
Hannah has previously worked as a freelance translator, specialising in the translation of Business, Legal, and Medical texts from German and Russian into English. She also holds a TEFL qualification and previously taught English as a Second Language in Moscow.
Research areas
Hannah’s research interests include sociolinguistics (in particular, the relationship between language and identity), translation, theatre and performance, comparative literature, German studies, and Slavonic studies.
Hannah is currently involved in a project co-funded by the AHRC and the DFG, in collaboration with colleagues at Manchester Metropolitan University and the University of Duisburg-Essen, examining the linguistic practices of mining communities in the post-industrial era, with a particular focus on language variation, documentation, representation and regeneration.
Previous projects include:
Master’s dissertation (2020): ‘From page to stage: A sociolinguistic approach to translating Bulgakov’s Beg for a British audience’
Doctoral thesis (2025): ‘Reimagining the ‘fifth wall’: The role of the translator in British and American staged productions of the works of Mikhail Bulgakov’
External activity
Hannah has served on the Membership Committee for the International Association for Translation and Intercultural Studies since 2023.
Publications
Klimas, H. (2025) Bibliography of Anglophone staged productions of Mikhail Bulgakov’s work in Britain and the United States of America, 1934-2024. [Data set]. University of Leeds. https://doi.org/10.5518/1602
Orcid ID: https://orcid.org/0009-0002-9395-9976