News

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The strand 1-led conference ‘Languages and Others: Diversity and Humour in Catalonia and Ukraine’ took place on 18 March 2019 at the University of Cambridge. The aim of this conference was to bring together practitioners and scholars to address questions of diversity, linguistic unity and humour in Catalonia and Ukraine. It consisted of two round tables and concluded with a public lecture.

On 10-11 January 2019 at the University of Birmingham, an international conference, ‘Multilingual Practices in Early Modern Literary Culture’, brought together scholars from around the UK and continental Europe to explore ways in which multilingualism shaped early modern literary practice. The conference consisted of six panels, including scholars from a range of disciplines such as Modern Languages, English, Classics, Neo-Latin, and History. The event was made possible by a MEITs flexible funding award.

Another successful collaboration between the MEITS team and Cambridge Ethnic Community Forum (https://www.cecf.co.uk/) took place on 20 February 2019 at Arbury Court, Cambridge. This community event, celebrating International Mother Language Day, allowed those attending to share ideas on what it means to be multilingual for those living in Cambridge today.

On 14 November 2017 sixteen multilingual Year 8 students from four schools in Nottingham visited the University of Nottingham to take part in a workshop entitled What I want to say is... The session was organized by colleagues from Strand 2 of the MEITS project, Nottingham City Council's IDEAL team, and the Nottingham Writers' Studio.

Colleagues from Strands 1 and 3 of the MEITS project organised a public conference on ‘Languages in Conflict and Reconciliation’ in Belfast on Friday, 25 January 2019. The event was held in collaboration with the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice and with support from the Modern Languages Core Disciplinary Research group at QUB.

Following a successful second policy workshop in December 2018 in Belfast, bringing together policymakers and academics from England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, Wendy Ayres-Bennett, PI of MEITS, and Janice Carruthers, AHRC Leadership Fellow in Modern Languages, have published a new Policy Briefing on Modern Languages Educational Policy in the UK.

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