News

On 11-13 December 2017, the Strand 2 conference on Language Standardization and Linguistic Variation in Asia from Sociolinguistic Perspectives took place at University of Nottingham’s Ningbo campus (UNNC) in China. The international conference was organised by Prof Nicola McLelland and Hui (Annette) Zhao, with the assistance of Prof Anwei Feng and other colleagues at UNNC. Members from Strand 2, Prof Wendy Ayres-Bennett, John Bellamy and Jiaye (Jenny) Wu, also attended the conference and participated in the discussion.

On Sunday 19 November, the MEITS team took part in another collaborative community event, this time led by the Cambridge Ethnic Community Forum.

We are delighted to announce the outcome of our flexible funding competition. Beginning in early 2018 and running for two years, the projects will work alongside the MEITS team to help reinvigorate research in modern languages and change public attitudes towards multilingualism through providing material for our proposed pop-up museum of languages.

On Saturday, 28 October, the MEITS project took part in the Cambridge Festival of Ideas, an annual two-week celebration of the arts, humanities and social sciences organised by the University of Cambridge, in partnership with Anglia Ruskin University.

On 13 October, the Language Show in London hosted the “Speaking to a Global Future” Symposium, organised by Speak to the Future in association with Rosetta Stone. In a series of keynote talks and discussion panels, the symposium brought together government officials, academics, and language learners. The programme of the day featured Prof Wendy Ayres-Bennet and Dr Thomas Bak, representing the MEITS project.

In this latest MEITS podcast, Wendy Ayres-Bennett discusses with Baroness Jean Coussins, Co-Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Modern Languages, the need for a national languages policy and a more holistic approach towards languages in the UK.

One of the international MEITS partners, Dr Åsta Haukås (University of Bergen) has been awarded funding from the Norwegian Research Council to support two PhD candidates to work on a Strand 4 parallel project with the research question: To what extent do the lower secondary school subjects Framandspråk (Foreign Languages) and Fordjupning i engelsk (English as an in-depth study topic) promote learners' development of a multilingual and multicultural identity?

Call For Papers for Early Career Researchers for the MEITS conference on Global approaches to multilingualism and standardisation (Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge, 16-18 April 2018)