Laura Babcock

Laura Babcock is an Assistant Professor of Interpreting Studies at Stockholm University's Department of Swedish Language and Multilingualism, affiliated with the SPRINT research group. She holds a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience from SISSA (Trieste, Italy), focusing on interpreting cognition and brain structure. Her research examines how multilingualism and interpreting experience influence cognition and neural mechanisms. Babcock teaches in the Conference Interpreting program at TÖI (Institute for Interpreting and Translation Studies), supervising MA and PhD students, including Thomas Thomsen, whose work explores dialogue interpreter cognitive processes.

Her research spans neurobiology of interpreting, bilingualism, and cognitive control, with key contributions on memory improvements from interpreting training and neural correlates of simultaneous interpreting. Babcock collaborates internationally, co-authoring studies on language control mechanisms and brain structure asymmetries. Her current projects investigate dialogue interpreter cognition and neurobiological underpinnings of interpreting processes.

Babcock’s publications include work on lexical decision pathways, verbal Stroop effects, and MRI applications in multilingual studies. She also lectures on multilingualism and MRI applications. No formal scientific awards are listed, though her work is widely cited in cognitive neuroscience and interpreting studies.