Lisha Xu is a Lecturer in Translation Studies at the School of Modern Languages and Cultures. She obtained her PhD in Translation from Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 2021. Before she joined UoG, she worked as a Teaching Fellow in Chinese and Translation Studies at the University of Edinburgh. 

Her research involves audio-visual translation in theatre and literature, translation and advocacy, and on how to ensure accessibility for a wider audience in the theatre. Her current research is focused on translating Classical Chinese Opera (xiqu) for the Anglophone stage and the study of Chinese translators of the early 20th-century diaspora.

Her own PhD research looked at how Peking Opera, one of the most widely-staged forms of Classical Chinese Opera in China today, might be translated for performance in the English-speaking world. Her thesis analysed the first English-language production of Peking Opera on the London stage (1934) by a Chinese translator (S.I. Hsiung). Her case study analysed Hsiung’s strategies for negotiating the formal and narrative codes that bind Peking Opera performance into its characteristically unified harmonious aesthetic. Translation for performance is considered in her research as a form of writing that both recognizes the demands of spectatorship, as well as the rights and interests of the original.

She is now working on a book about Classical Chinese Opera (xiqu) Translation. 

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Prior publications

Principal Supervisor: Revisiting The Third Space: translation and adaptation of contemporary graphic novels as diasporic Chinese YA literature in the Anglophone world, Di Yang, October 2025 Entry

Co-Supervisor: Cross-Cultural Beauty Advice: Understanding Politeness Strategies on RED and Instagram, Kexin Cao, October 2025 Entry

• Yang, Hanru
  Unnatural Narrative in Translating Novels and Short Stories

Translation Studies MSc:

Translation Studies: Theory and Practice

Translation of Literature and Culture

Approaches to Translation and Professional Environment

Mandarin Advanced and Language Study