Our Faculty
Learning from the experts
From a former naval engineering officer to a former translator for Chanel to the head of translation at the Banque Cantonale Vaudoise, our teaching faculty is an eclectic bunch. They’re also among the top academics and professionals in their fields.
Having studied sociology rather than languages as an undergraduate, Stuart Coe was nonetheless “recruited” for the programme by FTI students who thought he had a great gift for languages. They were right: he is now an editor at the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva, having previously worked as a translator at a bank, the UN and the ILO. Stuart’s masters thesis was on translating wordplay and puns, and he continues to bring his highly developed sense of the sheer fun of playing with language(s) to his work at the Red Cross and his teaching at FTI, where he joined the Faculty in 2013.
DunLany
Melissa DunLany grew up in South Carolina and has been a Genevan since 2009. She holds a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania and is an FTI alumna, with a Master’s degree in specialized translation. Early in her career, she was a technical writer for a software company. She currently works as a freelance translator and editor for various organizations. At FTI, Melissa teaches a Master’s class in specialized writing and an American culture & communication class for Bachelor’s students. Her research interests, leftovers from her doctoral dissertation on the aesthetics of trash, include the relationship between writing, translation, and waste.
Friesen
Ed Friesen fell into the language cauldron as a baby: he was born into a German-speaking community in the former Soviet Union, where he started his schooling. His family then moved to Canada, where he completed an engineering degree and went on to serve in the navy. He spent a happy couple of years dabbling in philosophy, linguistics and literature in Germany, before moving on to translation full-time. Ed has worked as a linguist for manufacturers and international bodies in domains as diverse as space exploration, fundamental physics, human rights and climate change. A five-year excursion into the fascinating world of terminology at the United Nations was followed by a return to the world of technical translation. He now teaches German-to-English translation at the Faculty and works as a translator and reviser at the International Telecommunication Union.
Guigue
Alexandre Guigue completed his Master’s at the Université Pierre-Mendès France (Grenoble II) and received both his Bachelor’s and PhD from the Université Savoie Mont Blanc. He is an associate professor and the associate head of the Faculty of Law at the Université Savoie Mont Blanc. His areas of interest include constitutional law, public finance law, comparative studies, legal theory and legal translation. He is a co-founder of Jurisprudence Revue critique, a legal journal that is aimed at creating a critical legal movement in the French-speaking world. In 2020, he published a book on the UK's public finance law (Bruylant). At FTI, he teaches two courses: a theoretical and comparative introduction to law with a special focus on the common law system, and a course on the sources of law in common law countries.
Hewson
Lance Hewson is an Emeritus Professor of the English Unit. A graduate of Oxford, Université de Provence and Université Paul Valéry (Montpellier), Lance has held teaching posts in Aix-en-Provence, Paris, Montpellier, Toulouse, Texas and Geneva. In addition to French, Lance works with Croatian and German. His research interests include translation criticism, literary translation, creativity in translation, translating culture, and translation and adaptation. He is the author of one and co-author of two books on translation, and has written many articles and book chapters on these and related topics, such as the role and importance of explicitation, implicitation, addition and elimination, the problems posed by concepts used in translation studies and the challenges of international English when considered from the translational perspective. He is a sought after conference speaker and guest lecturer, with recent keynote presentations given in Limoges and Avignon, and guest lectures at Princeton and University College London. Lance served as Dean of the Faculty from 2005 to 2008 and 2010 to 2014. You will often find Lance listening to classical music, or playing the violin as leader of a string quartet.
Jemielity
David Jemielity is Vice President, Head of Translations and Senior English Translator at Banque Cantonale Vaudoise (BCV), in Lausanne. He is also a member of the bank’s Comité éditorial, which determines BCV’s overall communications policy, and since 2015 has been creative director and overall project lead for the bank’s brand identity advertising. At FTI, Dave teaches masters-level classes financial and general translation in the English Unit. He also co-teaches a faculty-wide class on how you create brand communications and then “transcreate” them into other languages and cultures. Dave has spoken and written widely on translation in corporate settings and “high-ambition” translation processes, most notably as Distinguished Speaker at the 2010 American Translators Association Annual Conference, Keynote Speaker at the European Commission’s 2019 annual translation conference, and Keynote Speaker at the 2019 Mediterranean Translators and Editors Association Conference. A native of Indiana, Dave studied philosophy and English literature at Amherst College (BA) and Oxford University (MPhil). He qualified for and raced in the European Ski-Mountaineering Championships in 1997 and 2000 and occasionally translates and writes on mountain-sport subjects.
Kutner
Danny Kutner, from New York, has been translating and revising at the United Nations in Geneva since 2006. He previously worked for 10 years at the ICRC and 2 years at the IPU as editor and translator/reviser; he also held numerous short-term translation and précis-writing appointments, including at ICAO, ITU, UNOV, WHO, UN Headquarters, UNOG and the ILO.
Danny obtained a B.A. in Russian language from McGill University before receiving an interpreters’ diploma from the University of Geneva, working from French and Russian. He has a passion for languages and has studied Spanish and Italian and has added Chinese to his language combination. He considers his greatest achievement to be his kids.
Pickford
Susan Pickford is head of the English unit. She was born in Britain and grew up in Kenya, making Swahili her first foreign language. She fully intends to return to it one day. In the meantime, she translates from French and German, mainly for museums, cultural institutions and university presses. She previously taught at the Sorbonne after graduating from Oxford and completing a PhD in comparative literature at the University of Toulouse. Her research focuses on the history and sociology of translators, mainly in the literary sector, often in dialogue with book history. She recently completed a book-length study of literary translators in nineteenth-century France. When she is not at work, she enjoys sewing, running and reading voraciously.
Tarpley
James (“Jamie”) Tarpley is the English-language translator for the University of Geneva as well as an instructor in the English Unit. He was born in Nashville, Tennessee, and grew up in the US, UK, and Nigeria. After an undergraduate degree from Vanderbilt University, he completed a PhD in French Literature at the University of Pittsburgh. He has taught at the Université François Rabelais in Tours, Middlebury College’s Ecole Française, and Florida State University, where he also directed study-abroad programs in France. Jamie is an alumnus of the English Unit, holding a Master’s degree in specialized translation. Jamie was the English translator for the Montreux Jazz Festival from 2012-2020.
Thien
Danielle Thien hails from Vancouver, Canada. She obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and French from the University of British Columbia, before moving to Geneva to do a Master’s in Translation. After completing internships at the International Committee of the Red Cross and Banque Cantonale Vaudoise, she began a PhD and became the English Unit assistant. In the summer of 2022, she defended her thesis entitled “The Literary Genealogy of an Opera Libretto: Translation, Adaptation and Fidelity in Berio’s Otello”. She continued her research and teaching activities as a post-doc from 2022-2024. She now teaches an Italian-to-English translation Bachelor-level class and works as a freelance translator in the humanitarian field, finance, and arts and culture. In addition to her professional and academic activities, Danielle is an active musician and writer. She plays the drums and piano, and has published several short stories and nonfiction essays in lit mags in Canada and the US.
Rosie Wells is a British translator working from French and Spanish into English. She teaches a number of courses in English and translation at the Bachelor’s and Master’s levels. After obtaining a Master’s in Translation from FTI, she worked as a senior translator at Banque Cantonale Vaudoise in Lausanne for nine years. She then went on to become a full-time freelance translator. In addition to working for a number of international organizations in Geneva, she now runs a small translation and communications company with a colleague.
Cockburn
Rebecca grew up in Australia and England. She has lived in various countries, working as a certified CELTA teacher and translating for publishers and companies. She holds Master’s degrees from Royal Holloway, University of London, in French literature, theatre and culture, and from the University of Bath in professional language skills. She has been translating, editing and précis-writing as a freelancer for the international organizations in Geneva since 2012, focusing on human rights and labour law.
Scala
Chris co-owns a small English-language communications agency in Lausanne that provides translating, editing and copywriting services. He holds a BA in French and a BA in Russian from Pennsylvania State University, a Master’s in Foreign Service from Georgetown and a Master’s in French Literature from NYU. Early in his career, Chris taught English in Caen, France, on a Fulbright Grant and French at NYU. After working for several years in international development in Washington DC and Ukraine, he discovered translation. Since then, he has worked as a freelancer and held several in-house positions in that field, including at Exane-BNP Paribas in New York, Banque Cantonale Vaudoise in Lausanne and, most recently, the ICRC in Geneva, where he served as head of language services.
Born in the Philippines, Lucy Kirk spent her formative years in Cambridge before moving to London for her BA in French and Hispanic Studies at KCL. She fell in love with translation while studying abroad in Chile and knew that the FTI was the place to go. After completing her MA in Specialised Translation in 2018, she moved to Madrid to translate for the International Olive Council. She moved back to Geneva in 2023 for a job as a technical editor at ISO. At the FTI, she teaches Spanish to English translation at BA level. In her spare time, she reads, runs and yogas.
Ceri Pollard comes from the UK and is a self-professed nerd about all things language including, of course, translation. In the UK, she studied a BA in Translation, Media and French at the University of East Anglia where she discovered subtitling. She’s been hooked ever since. Ceri first arrived at the FTI in 2015 as an exchange student and enjoyed it so much she came back to do the master’s programme one year later. After graduating from UNIGE, she worked as an in-house English subtitler at a media localisation company in London for over four years. Now back in Geneva for round three, she is the new assistant of the English unit, doing a PhD on the topic of the subtitling industry. When not being a fangirl about languages, Ceri enjoys knitting, playing video games and swing dancing.
How to Apply
Standards of foreign-language and writing-skills assessment vary widely from country to country. This is why all applicants are required to sit for entrance exams. The exams are held in Geneva and a few other selected cities around the world. Successful applicants come from a wide variety of backgrounds, but one thing they have in common is strong knowledge of French and/or Spanish and exceptional writing skills in English.