Staff profile

I started learning Russian as a beginner on the MA(Hons) German and Russian programme at the University of St Andrews (2013-18). As part of these studies, I spent a year working as a British Council Foreign Language Assistant at a school in Lübeck, Germany (2015-16), before completing a semester of study on the Rossiia segodnia course at St Petersburg State University in Russia (2017), where I wrote a dissertation on the changing perception of the Romanovs in modern Russian culture, on the centenary of the Russian Revolution. After graduating from St Andrews, I spent a year teaching English as a Second Language at a school in Moscow.

I then enrolled on the MA Translation Studies programme at Durham University (2019-20), where I studied Specialised Russian<>English and German<>English translation. I also completed a dissertation: 'From page to stage: A sociolinguistic approach to translating Bulgakov's Beg for a British audience', graduating from Durham with a Distinction.

After graduating from Durham, I worked as a Freelance Translator from German and Russian into English, specialising in Business, Legal, and Medical translations. My most recent project was translating a website about IT Cloud solutions from Russian into English for an international company in 2022.

In 2021, I began a PhD in Translation Studies at the University of Leeds, generously funded by a White Rose College of the Arts and Humanities Open Competition Studentship. The project, 'Reimagining the 'fifth wall': The role of the translator in British and American staged productions of the works of Mikhail Bulgakov', examined the true extent of translator labour in British and American theatres, and developed a novel theoretical framework to analyse how the performative actions of Bulgakov translators (re)construct their identity. As part of my studies, in 2023, I completed a Researcher Employability Project at the National Theatre Archive and a Knowledge Exchange Project with Columbia University. I passed my viva voce in May 2025, and undertook a postdoctoral research position in Linguistics at Nottingham Trent University until August 2025.

During my time at Leeds, I also taught on Beginners' Russian and Comparative Literature modules at undergraduate level, and on the MA in Applied Translation Studies programme at postgraduate level.

My doctoral thesis has been nominated as the University of Leeds' 2025 entry for the CIUTI Award, and I am currently preparing a monograph based on my research in collaboration with Routledge.

Research interests

• Archival practices and accessibility
• Comparative literature
• East European literature
• History of the late Imperial period and the Russian Revolution
• Sociolinguistics
• The life and work of Mikhail Bulgakov
• Theatre and performance (particularly early Soviet theatre)
• Translation (especially theatre translation and human translator studies)

Research activities

• Invited speaker: first-year Medical Humanities seminar, Yale University (February 2024)
• Researcher Employability Project, National Theatre Archive (October-December 2023)
• Knowledge Exchange Project, Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library (July 2023)
• International Association for Translation and Intercultural Studies Membership Committee (2023 - present)

Publications

Conference Paper

Klimas, H. (2025). Multiple roles, multiple visibilities? Shining a spotlight on the performance of scholar-translators in British theatre [Conference paper]. Presented at The 11th European Society for Translation Studies Congress, University of Leeds, United Kingdom.

Klimas, H. (2024). Performers without a stage: The precarious position of translators in British theatre [Conference paper]. Presented at The Theatre and Performance Research Association Annual Conference, Northumbria University, United Kingdom.

Klimas, H. (2024). What's in a name (or term)? A critical analysis of the perception of translators and translation in British theatre [Conference paper]. Presented at The Society for Theatre Research 75th Anniversary Conference, University of Bristol, United Kingdom.

Klimas, H. (2023). Breaking the 'fifth' wall: The role of the translator in British and American staged productions of the works of Mikhail Bulgakov [Conference paper]. Presented at The British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies Annual Conference, University of Glasgow, United Kingdom.

Dataset

Bibliography of Anglophone staged productions of Mikhail Bulgakov's work in Britain and the United States of America, 1934-2024

Klimas, H. (2025). Bibliography of Anglophone staged productions of Mikhail Bulgakov's work in Britain and the United States of America, 1934-2024. University of Leeds. [Dataset] https://doi.org/10.5518/1602 

Other (Digital/Visual Media)

Archive Unboxed: The House of Bernarda Alba and translation

Klimas, H. (2023). Archive Unboxed: The House of Bernarda Alba and translation [National Theatre Blog, 27 November 2023].

Research at the RBML: Hannah Klimas on Mirra Ginsburg's translations of Mikhail Bulgakov

Moe, M. (2023). Research at the RBML: Hannah Klimas on Mirra Ginsburg's translations of Mikhail Bulgakov [Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library Blog, 6 July 2023].