News

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)

As part of the Being Human Festival 2017, the MEITS Project is organising a photo exhibition which will take place in Belfast, Cambridge, Edinburgh and Nottingham, 17-25 November 2017. If you would like the chance for your photo to be part of this exhibition, we invite you to send us your images of how different languages feature around you – whether in your home, your neighbourhood, your community, or in your town or city. We want to know what multilingualism means to you, and you can interpret this in any way you like. You can submit up to three photos and please send them as attachments to the MEITS team at meitsbeinghuman@gmail.com. The submission deadline has been extended until 13 October 2017.