David Connolly

David Connolly was born in 1954 in Sheffield, England. Of Irish descent, he has been living and working in Greece since 1979 and became a naturalized Greek citizen in 1998. He studied Ancient Greek Philology at the University of Lancaster (1974-77), Medieval and Modern Greek Philology at the University of Oxford (1977-79), and received his Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of East Anglia (1997) for his dissertation on "The Theory and Practice of Literary Translation and the Special Translation Problems in the Work of Odysseas Elytis." He also holds professional diplomas in teaching English as a foreign language (Royal Society of Arts 1984) and in translation (Institute of Linguists 1992). He is a regular member of various professional translator and writer associations both in Britain (Institute of Linguists, Institute of Translation and Interpreting, Society of Authors) and in Greece (Hellenic Authors' Society, Hellenic Society of Literary Translators, Panhellenic Association of Professional Translators). He served as the head of the Translation Department at the British Council in Athens (1991-1994) and has taught the theory and practice of literary translation at undergraduate and postgraduate levels in Greek universities (Ionian University 1991-1997, University of Athens 1999-2000, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki). He has also been an external examiner at British universities with postgraduate translation programs. Furthermore, he held honorary academic positions at the University of Birmingham (Honorary Research Fellow 1999-2002), Princeton University (Stanley J. Seeger Visiting Fellow 2001), and the University of Oxford (Hellenic Foundation Visiting Fellow in Modern Greek Studies 2002). His translations have been awarded in England (The Yeats Club Sixth Open Poetry Competition for Translations 1989), in America (The Elizabeth Constantinides Memorial Translation Prize for 1996), and in Greece (Hellenic Society of Literary Translators Award for Best Translation from Greek 1996, Honorary Distinction from the Ministry of Culture 1999, State Translation Prize for a Work of Greek Literature into a Foreign Language, 2008 for the book "Beautiful as a Greek" by Nikos Engonopoulos).