Kristen Gehrman has worked at the VU since 2017, teaching courses related to academic writing, translation, literature and applied linguistics. Until 2025, she was a teacher and coordinator in the Master Schrijven and Vertalen, specializing in courses related to Dutch-English translation. Currently, she teaches in the Bachelor of Literature and Society, as well as Communication and Information Science. Her main interests include multilingualism, writing and translation.
Originally from Charleston, South Carolina, USA, she earned her Master in Language and Communication Science from the University of Lausanne, Switzerland.
Upon graduation, she moved to the Netherlands and began teaching academic writing at Leiden University. She joined the VU in 2017, first as a teacher in the Academic Language Programme, and later joined the English Linguistics team and Writing and Translation Master.
Alongside her work at the VU, she has given workshops for the Expertise Centrum Literair Vertalen at Utrecht University and served as mentor for emerging translators via the Nederlands Letterenfonds. She has also taught the BCLT summer school for literary translation at the University of East Anglia.
She continues to translate contemporary and classic Dutch literature for British and American publishers, such as Granta, Transit Books, Picador, Macmillan and Harper Collins. She has translated work by Hanna Bervoets, Dola de Jong, Bea Vianen, Annejet van der Zijl, Alexander Münninghoff and Lize Spit, among others.
In 2025, her translation of De geschiedenis van mijn sexualiteit (The History of My Sexuality) by Tobi Lakmaker won the Vondel Translation Prize, the highest distinction for a translated work from Dutch to English.
