The Centre for Humanities Education is pleased to announce the 2024-2025 call for small EDI grants within its Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) stream. We invite staff and students to propose projects that contribute to fostering inclusivity, diversity, and accessibility in education. For this round, we will accept all applications that centre on EDI; we particularly encourage initiatives that focus on (i) disability equity and (ii) race equity.  

Grants Purpose: The purpose of these small grants is to encourage innovative projects that aim to enhance equal opportunities and create a more inclusive learning environment at UCL Arts and Humanities. We especially welcome proposals that consider disability and race (and the intersections of these with other dimensions of equity (including socio-economic equity, gender equity, LGBTQ+ equity, race equity, religion and belief equity). 

 

Eligibility:  

• Faculty, staff, and students from UCL Arts and Humanities are eligible to apply. Students should apply in collaboration with a member of staff. 
• If you are a student, we suggest you discuss this with someone in your programme or study or department. If you don’t feel this is appropriate for your idea or are not quite sure whom to contact among staff, then you are also welcome to contact Dr Jesper Hansen (j.hansen@ucl.ac.uk). 
• Collaborative projects involving multiple stakeholders are encouraged.  
• Projects that take intersectionality into account are warmly welcome.  

Grants Amount: Grants of up to £500 will be awarded to successful proposals.  

What can these funds be used for?   

• Events/conferences/workshops;
• To pay PGTAs or other students to undertake tasks relating to an event/conference/activity (at the relevant standard UCL rate);   
• To pay the expenses of visitors (travel/overnight hotel if necessary) who give talks (note that UCL Expenses Policy will apply to these);   
• To purchase resources/consumables.   

What can they NOT be used for?   

• They cannot be used for staff buy out;   
• They cannot be used for the purchase of equipment.  

Project Categories: We welcome proposals in the following categories (but not limited to):  

• Development of educational resources that address Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion.
• Initiatives promoting mentorship and support for students from underrepresented backgrounds.
• Workshops, seminars, or events fostering awareness and dialogue on equity in education.  

Application Process: Interested applicants are invited to submit a proposal via this Microsoft Form, including the following details:  

• Project title and brief description (up to 300 words).
• Objectives and expected outcomes (up to 200 words).  
• Budget breakdown.  
• Timeline for project implementation.  
• Potential challenges and mitigation strategies (up to 200 words).  
• Relevance to the overarching goal of socio-economic equity and education (up to 200 words).  

Submission Deadline: The deadline for submitting proposals is 25th November, 2024. Late submissions will not be considered.  

Review Process: Proposals will be reviewed by a panel within the EDI stream of the Arts and Humanities Centre for Humanities Education, considering the alignment with the initiative’s goals, feasibility, and potential impact on socio-economic equity and education.  

Notification of Awards: Successful applicants will be notified by 2nd December. Funds will be disbursed upon approval of project plans. Funding has to be spent by May 30th, 2025 (please keep in mind that this is a hard deadline). 

Contact: For inquiries or further information, please contact Thomas Cryer (thomas.cryer.21@ucl.ac.uk).

How to Apply:  

Deadline: 25th November, 4pm.  

We look forward to receiving your innovative proposals that contribute to advancing equity and education within our community. 

by Poppy Shortmoor and Ella Bosworth-Gerbino (Department of Greek and Latin)

What was Rome’s ideal woman? Selflessness, sexuality, and dependency on men – these were the values that coloured the depiction of female characters in Roman epic, mythology, and elegy.

But this idealised helplessness of women in Roman literature is juxtaposed against their real economic liberties, where there was much more freedom and agency than is generally believed.

Our paper, titled “How the Economic Role of Roman Women both Challenges and Conforms to Literary Ideals”, focused on this juxtaposition, and was one of many presented at this year’s Greek and Latin Speaker Series, titled New Frontiers in the Ancient World.

The Speaker Series, organised this year by Mairead McAuley and Ronald Chiu, aims to diversify the curriculum and encourage students to explore new perspectives with regards to Classics.

Placing student work front and centre

Student participants volunteered to give a short lecture on a topic of their choosing within the themes of sexuality, gender, identity, race, and otherness.

After participants had their abstract approved, they independently researched and created their presentations over a few weeks. These projects covered topics like femininity in Sumerian literature, sexuality in Greek art, and feminist analyses of mythology and theatre.

A commitment to equality, diversity, and inclusion is at the centre of this year’s Speaker Series. This focus allows for new topics not commonly discussed to be introduced to students, which hopefully will aid the process of broadening the wider curriculum.

Additionally, it highlights what students are interested in, fostering a more welcoming environment and allowing new perspectives into the discussion on the ancient world.

This interest in diversity was particularly evident in the wide variety of talks from other students. Not only were they able to explore their own interests, as we were, but also to illuminate topics that other participants might not have been aware of before.

Karen Guo’s talk “I petrify: Medusa and the Stone Butch” was a particular standout.

Bringing together contemporary queer theory and ancient mythology, she discussed parallels between the concept of the Stone Butch popularised by Feinberg in the late twentieth century, and the themes of sexuality in Medusa’s story.

Mitigating historical bias on modern literary reception

Our own paper was illustrated through an exploration of the historic figures including Ummidia Quadratilla and other Roman women.

Together, we set out a rough plan of our presentation, then went on to conduct our research separately before combining our arguments.

Ultimately, we reached the conclusion that it is important – when studying classics – not to take literature as unequivocal, historical fact, due to its intrinsic links to the ideals of its time and culture.

This topic was particularly interesting to both of us, because, as women studying in a traditionally male dominated field, we understand the importance of recognising the impacts of historical bias on modern literary reception, and of highlighting female history.

Exploring student interests beyond modules

The Speaker Series gave us an opportunity to explore our subjects outside of the modules available in the Greek and Latin department.

Being able to investigate a particular area of Classics that we are especially interested in, we were able to develop a sense of independence within our studies. In particular, the Speaker Series allowed us to develop skills that we have not had much opportunity to exercise as of yet.

Additionally, as we both plan on going into higher education, this project has provided an invaluable introduction into a more self-directed line of study, giving us skills that will no doubt be useful in our educational journey.

Poppy Shortmoor is a second year ancient world student who is planning on doing a masters in economic and social history and is particularly interested in the economy of the early Roman imperial era. Ella Bosworth Gerbino is a 2^nd year French and Latin student who is planning on going into teaching and is interested in the modern reception of classics. 

The Centre for Humanities Education is pleased to offer up to £1000 for projects supporting educational research or enhancement of any kind. We particularly encourage applications in the areas of assessment and feedback as well as on AI, technology, and education (including exploratory projects). We also encourage collaborative projects that involve colleagues and students across career stages and disciplines.

Some ideas for what these funds could be used for:

• Events/conferences/workshops;
• To pay PGTAs or other students to undertake tasks relating to an Education-focused event/conference/activity (at the relevant standard UCL rate);
• To pay the expenses of visitors (travel/overnight hotel if necessary) who give talks (note that UCL Expenses Policy will apply to these);
• To run a small research project with student researchers
• To purchase resources/consumables.

What can they NOT be used for?

• They cannot be used for staff buy out;
• They cannot be used for the purchase of equipment. 

See the full list of previously funded projects here. 

The deadline for applications is Monday 22 April 2024 at 5pm. Projects need to be completed by 15 December 2024. 

Please click here to access the short online form to submit your application.

Good luck! We’re excited to see what comes next for CHE fund awardees!  

by Selena Daly (SELCS) 

The second meeting of the Creative Teaching in the Humanities Network, in November 2023, focused on assessments and featured two speakers: Dr Akil Awan, Associate Professor of Modern History and Political Violence in the Department of History, Royal Holloway, University of London and Dr Eleanor Chiari, Associate Professor (Teaching) at SELCS in UCL.

Developing the ‘Unessay’

Akil presented his use of the ‘Unessay’ as part of the assessment for his module on the history of terrorism from the 19^th century to today. Instead of submitting a traditional written essay, students were asked to complete an ‘Unessay,’ essentially a creative and critical engagement with any theme from the module. Possible formats could include a piece of artwork, a documentary, a graphic novel, a website, or a short story, among many other possibilities.

Among examples of some of the best work students submitted as ‘Unessays’ were the following: a debate between a perpetrator and victim of terrorism in Northern Ireland written as a play; a board game in which you get to play as British colonial forces or the ‘Mau Mau’ or Kenyan Land and Freedom Army; and a musical composition focusing on the immediate public responses to the 9/11 attacks and remembrance of victims of terrorism. Students were also required to submit a 500-word self-reflexive essay worth 25% of the grade.

Engaging with trauma in visual culture

Eleanor presented an assessment that features as part of an undergraduate module entitled ‘Trauma in Visual Culture,’ which had similarities to the Unessay approach presented by Akil but adapted to her particular module’s context. Its aim was to encourage students to reflect more critically on emotive side of visual culture.

Students were required to submit a portfolio of work that responded to the module’s themes and theories examined. Examples of student work included: a graphic novel-style reinterpretation of Art Spiegelman’s Maus to explore the theme of post memory in the context of the Troubles in Northern Ireland; a visual journal exploring the haunting legacy of Nic Ut’s ‘terror of war’ photograph from the war in Vietnam; and a video essay which explored the idea of the ‘illogical spectator’ using family home videos from before the Syrian war. If students opted to submit an entirely abstract piece, they were required to submit a 1,500-word essay on their work.

Both Akil and Eleanor identified similar advantages to adopting these kinds of creative assessments. Both highlighted their value in catering to a diverse student cohort and the way that they foster creativity, imagination, and experimentation. Creative assessments also allow students to make use of skills they may have developed in other aspects of their lives (e.g. music or art), allowing for more holistic learning.

The approach also encourages students to engage more personally with the module content and Eleanor highlighted how, for some students who accessed family stories, the assessment helped them see how the visual could facilitate processes of grief and healing. Another major advantage is the fact that these assessment types are ‘ChatGPT-proof,’ as an AI system would be unable to produce the creative outputs required of the students.

Navigating difficulties as a module convenor

Although both speakers emphasised how rewarding and stimulating these kinds of creative assessments can be, both Akil and Eleanor also highlighted some issues that any colleagues should be aware of when considering an assignment of this type. Both of these modules confront difficult and potentially upsetting topics so sensitivity is required of the module convenor in navigating these issues, especially if students opt to focus on a topic that is related to their personal experience. Both Akil and Eleanor always offered students an ‘escape option,’ in the form of a traditional essay, if they decided they did not want to attempt the creative assignment, although Eleanor said no student had ever requested it.

There is also a significant time commitment involved for the module leader. Each project must be individually approved, often through a number of meetings with students. And finally, but perhaps most importantly, was the issue of how to ensure parity between students. Marking criteria are thus crucial. Akil’s assignments were thus judged on a non-standard set of the criteria, including the following: suitability (use of a medium appropriate to the topic); engaging (the submission is readable/watchable/listenable); and originality (the submission adds something new rather than summarising existing information).

Assignments of this type require us to ask whether it is even possible to measure creativity, or, as Akil said, ‘how can we compare a watercolour and a short story?’ The answer is with careful handling, precise marking criteria and motivated and committed instructors.

The Creative Teaching in the Humanities Network is led by Dr Selena Daly (SELCS). If you have any queries or suggestions for future events and/or speakers, please do get in touch at selena.daly@ucl.ac.uk.

by Selena Daly (SELCS) 

The first meeting of the Creative Teaching in the Humanities Network got off to a great start in October 2023 with a session on Object-Based Learning (OBL). Dr Thomas Kador (BASc) led all the participants in a fun and enlightening ice-breaker session that was, literally, hands on! Each table had a black box with holes in the sides placed in front of them and we were invited to feel the object inside, to draw it and to describe it. I won’t ruin the exercise for future participants but the objects ranged from the ancient to the modern, from the natural to the mechanical.

1. Consolidating learning through creating a memorable experience 

As Thomas then explained to us, sight is vastly overplayed in teaching and education. Our sense of touch is generally forgotten and yet our fingertips are powerful analytical tools. As one participant commented, an object-handling session is a ‘low stakes way of engaging students,’ while others remarked on how a memorable experience of this kind can stay with them longer, thus consolidating learning.

2. Moving students into non-formal learning spaces

Dr Andrea Fredericksen, Curator of the UCL Art Museum, then highlighted that in her line of work you can’t touch the artworks but explained that working up close with artworks can be a transformative experience for students. She highlighted how OBL can facilitate student wellbeing by getting students into ‘non-formal learning spaces,’ which can help overcome classroom anxiety and combat stress.

3. Allowing students who are less comfortable with traditional academic essays to shine 

Next, a series of colleagues shared insights and examples of how they use OBL in their teaching practice, beginning with Dr Kirsty Sinclair Dootson from SELCS. For a module on film materiality, she has put together her own personal teaching collection of film negatives, which is often the first time students have ever encountered such objects. She encourages them to think about issues such as size, flammability and even scent, asking them what they can learn about film without watching a movie. One of her big takeaways was how the assessment based on this film stock flipped the hierarchy in the room, with those who had performed less well on a traditional academic essay excelling at this task.

4. Helping educators teach difficult histories and topics 

Dr Lucia Rinaldi, also from SELCS, highlighted her use of the UCL Galton Collection in teaching a summer school module entitled ‘The Dark Side of London,’ using objects related to the development of forensic science, fingerprinting and aspects of eugenics. She emphasised how OBL can be a powerful tool in helping educators teach difficult histories and topics, by offering an alternative access point to controversial subjects.

5. Building student confidence through introducing real-world professional situations 

Lastly, Dr Anna Maguire (History) and Jo Baines (UCL Special Collections) presented their integration of OBL into the MA in Public History. They both highlighted the importance of sustainable partnerships between academics and UCL collections and archives. Indeed, the MA in Public History programme was approved to be in collaboration with Special Collections, which, in turn, influenced how the programme was designed. One activity asks students to design a lesson plan using objects in a box they are given, with tutors then intervening with last-minute alterations to the brief, exactly as happens in a real-world professional situation. According to Anna, it was a scenario that helped build students’ confidence and made them more confident in engaging with other creative outputs.

Final reflections: what about digital objects?

Aside from showcasing the exciting work being done in the area of OBL across UCL and providing attendees inspiration for how to embed OBL into their own modules, this session also raised some interesting questions. One of the most pressing was how OBL interacts with the digital world. Kirsty also asks her students to engage with films as digital files, asking what you cannot learn from a film that has been digitised and encouraging them to reflect on the consequences of the move from print to digital.

A broader reflection raised several times was whether we should include digital objects in definitions of OBL. Out of necessity, during the Covid lockdowns work, that was previously in person and hands-on was transferred online which posed some interesting questions for the group such as ‘can digital objects be included in definitions of OBL?’ and ‘what is gained and what is lost when we encounter objects only in digital form?’. Perhaps these are questions that can be tackled at a future meeting of the Creative Teaching in the Humanities Network.

The Creative Teaching in the Humanities Network is led by Dr Selena Daly (SELCS). If you have any queries or suggestions for future events and/or speakers, please do get in touch at selena.daly@ucl.ac.uk.

by Dr Simon Rowberry (UCL Centre for Publishing)

Edited 16 May 2024 to add: Inksights is now live! Check out the podcast here. 

In an era where digital landscapes evolve at lightning speed, equipping students with future-proof skills is more crucial than ever. With generative AI and multimedia platforms redefining professional boundaries, how can educational institutions stay ahead?

The answer: overhauling our curriculum for agility by embedding digital literacy throughout, and offering opportunities for students to work on real-world, career-enhancing projects.

A team of seven MA Publishing students, led by Amy, Lily and Mira, have been doing just this by working on Inksights, a podcast aimed at combining academic and industry perspectives on current publishing topics.

Each episode will blend interviews, reviews, debates, and news stories. Each member of team focuses on a different part of the podcast’s creation, production and marketing.

Finding your voice and preferred ways of collaborating

During the Inksights podcast’s pilot recording, the team tackled the art of collaboration head-on. The hosts encountered a challenge—avoiding interruptions—but ingeniously resolved it by adopting a lip balm stick as their “talking stick.” This simple yet effective strategy ensured clear, orderly discussions.

The Inksights team also skilfully navigated the challenge of sounding distinct and dynamic, steering clear of a “robotic” tone. The pilot showcases this success, achieved through planning and ensuring each host’s voice was unique and engaging. You can listen to it below (13:09 minutes long):

 

Methods of collaboration and working with guests were also challenges. While exploring various platforms, students discovered that each had its pros and cons. Zoom emerged as a standout for virtual sessions: the team praised it “for virtual interview/podcast recordings. The recording was quickly processed and available to access on the cloud by the production team.”

Working collaboratively on a podcast requires digital collaboration tools, which have proliferated over the last five years. The Inksights team are still finding the collaborative workflow that is most suitable for their needs. They are spending time to get this right early to avoid having to pivot to another setup later.

Our next steps include continuing to develop networks with similar groups of students and academics working on generative AI/podcasting across the University and the sector to gain further valuable insights and share good practice.

What Generative AI (currently) can and cannot do

Eden leads the generative AI project, focusing on images, videos, and animations. These are under-developed areas within publishing and require tools beyond Open AI’s Chat-GPT.

Through this scoping work, Eden notes: “I have become much more knowledgeable with this cutting-edge technology than industry professionals, putting me in a better position for job prospects.”

The projects highlight the constraints of today’s Generative AI tools in publishing. For example, it is possible to ask Chat-GPT to generate a book cover image, but this image appears in a square frame that requires further editing.

The file format of the output frequently clashes with current publishing workflows. This shifts human effort towards tedious tasks like cropping and format conversion, detracting from the creative focus on aesthetics and composition.

Likewise, most Generative AI services focus on a single media output, making cross-platform integrating challenging.

The Inksight podcast team’s experience with Zoom illustrates the benefits of human intervention as it “allows us to have video material to use for promotional purposes (Reels, YouTube, UCL publishing Instagram).”

This underscores the ongoing need to balance automation with human creativity, a vital skill for enhancing our students’ future employability.

The sustainability of extra-curricular media projects

The one-year format of our MA programme presents a significant hurdle for extracurricular activities as demonstrated by previous projects including Uncovering Publishing and Shelf Healing. Just as students hone their skills, they are ready to graduate, often having secured industry positions.

We do not yet have a practical solution to this challenge, but as the two projects continue to develop, we will look for ways to ensure greater continuity between cohorts and ensure teaching colleagues are equipped with the relevant skills to assist new groups of students.

The Inksights team are currently editing the first full episode of the podcast with the aim to release it by the end of Term 2.

Acknowledgements: Thanks to Amy, Eden, Lily and Mira for providing their thoughts on their progress to date. Simon used GPT-4 to improve the readability and conciseness of the first draft.

by Dr Xiaofan Amy Li (SELCS-CMII)

After half-term, Felix* realised that the academic rhetoric required of essays at UCL was very different from what she had learned in her BA in China.

Using lengthier and more elaborate sentences is typical in Chinese academic writing. However, Felix learned that this is seen as undesirable or unnecessary in academic English writing, which prefers short, plain language.

People assume that MA students are already skilled in writing coursework assignments, but often forget that many MA students come from radically different linguistic and academic backgrounds and are still learning new English language skills during the MA programme.

This is particularly the case for the MA in Comparative Literature, which attracts a large number of Chinese overseas students each year.

To focus on this issue, Dr Xiaofan Amy Li (Programme Director in MA Comparative Literature and EDI Co-lead at SELCS-CMII) organised a series of Grammar and Proofreading Workshops in Term 1 2023-24 for students whose first language is not English and who have not written extensive academic pieces in English before arriving at UCL.

This project raised awareness about linguistic disparities among MA students. It also offered an extended learning opportunity to help students who are disadvantaged compared to students whose first language is English and who have already been trained in anglophone academic cultures.

Workshop sessions took the format of individual feedback sessions (lasting 30 min) between a tutor and the student, focusing on a short piece of writing that responded to a writing prompt. Two PhD students in Comparative Literature, Oli Eccles and Clara Ng, tutored the sessions and gave meticulous feedback to tutees.

Sophie* is an MA student in Comparative Literature who found the English-language requirements for her module overwhelming, especially since English was not her native language and she had never written entire essays in academic English before.

The feedback sessions in the workshop focused on the grammatical and stylistic details of writing, which helped her understand what argumentative writing in academic English required.

Jian, another student, told their personal tutor that they found it very difficult to keep up with readings from their Comparative Literature modules.

They needed to check dictionaries constantly, which considerably slowed down their reading speed, and often worked until 2 a.m. to finish the required reading before class.

Due to this, they did not feel confident about completing written assessments. However, they found the workshop feedback extremely useful as their workshop tutor worked very patiently with them on details of constructing phrases, clarity of expression, and maintaining a coherent focus in essay writing.

Felix — the student mentioned at the beginning of this blog post — often made self-deprecating statements about not being able to address a certain problem in the conclusion.

After discussing these issues with Dr Li and attending the workshops, Felix has a much-improved understanding of the writing style and format required at UCL. Writing shorter and more concise sentences has also helped her to avoid extensive run-ons and grammatical errors that typically arise from constructing longer clauses.

This project has highlighted that passing an English language qualification such as IELTS or TOEFL is not the best indicator of overseas non-anglophone students’ existing training and abilities for writing complex and argumentative essays, which is required for MA programmes at SELCS-CMII.

More attention should be paid to the varying linguistic, cultural, and academic cultures of our students, and to the most concrete aspects of writing such as how to formulate a clear phrase and avoid awkward passive tenses.

Overall, this workshop has proved very useful for MA Comparative Literature students, especially in Term 1 when students are still settling into their courses.

Many thanks again to the workshop tutors Oli and Clara for their dedication and work!

*Names cited here are not real names as students preferred to keep their comments anonymised.

It’s time for the crit. These are words that might send a nervous flutter through the students at the creative arts university Dr. Victoria Odeniyi works at.

A crit is meant to be an open, democratic, and non-hierarchical space where students receive constructive feedback on their artwork. However, for some students, their lived experience of the crit diverged quite a bit from its intended purpose.

Victoria Odeniyi gave a talk titled “Challenges and opportunities of embedding institutional research findings into practice” at Decolonising Language Studies II about her experiences as an applied linguist at University of the Arts London.

Working with the Decolonising Arts Institute, she conducted an ethnographic research project focused on ways of creating more equitable educational outcomes, partly through narrowing persistent funding gaps between home and international students as well as between students of colour and students who identify as white.

The goal was to challenge colonial and imperial legacies and to drive cultural, social, and institutional change by encouraging the institution to critically reflect on their current practices.

This post is the third part of a series where we summarise speakers’ main ideas about decolonising language studies from a series of symposia organised organised Dr Jelena Ćalić and Dr Eszter Tarsoly on behalf of PROLang.

Expectations versus reality: the crit as “un-safe” space

The crit is intended to be an open space for students to display their artwork – such as sculptures and other installations – to their peers and tutors.

Victoria shares her experience about a crit she attended at a location called Safehouse in Peckham, where, over two days, students showcased their work to visiting arts scholars.

She observed tutors commenting on a student’s work in front of about thirty of their peers:

 

 

As Victoria says:

“We can see that there’s a disconnect between these spaces of open, democratic, and supportive peer review, where the tutor […] holds back, and what actually happens during interactions. So this was one example of how I felt […] why some students may have found this space particularly challenging.”

Turning her attention to the space, Victoria also realised that there was no plumbing or places for people to sit. She remarks that, ironically, “the safe house… felt unsafe to me.” Students undergoing the crit “needed a certain amount of stamina” to spend two days in this space.

Assessing multilingual repertoires in students’ art practices

Victoria then shares a story about a design student named Angela, who is both Cantonese- and English- speaking and uses both languages in her work.

Angela experienced an element of frustration in needing to constantly explain her work to her tutor, whom she felt was resistant towards her artistic choices.

As Angela said:

“I had to keep explaining… there’s a lot of hand-holding in terms of explaining it to tutors so they will understand where I am coming from.”

Victoria remarks that multilingual students often have to bear the responsibility of explaining their choices even though they are otherwise encouraged to draw on multiple semiotic resources – texts, colours, fonts, and layouts – in their work.

This also raises issues around how students using multilingual practices for their art can be assessed, especially if tutors are not language specialists or do not have an interest in language:

“If the teacher doesn’t understand Cantonese, how can this work be assessed according to perhaps relatively abstract assessment criteria – which is used to assess other forms of communicative practices?”

Facing institutional resistance to recommendations presented in Victoria’s report

As part of her research report, Victoria suggested initiatives to support awareness raising activities around language, multilingualism, and named languages within the academy.

She also suggested that recognising students’ language backgrounds and repertoires would be a way of cutting across institutional categories and labels. As she says in the talk: “We no longer [have to] speak about international students and home students; we can talk about the repertoire of semiotic resources for meaning-making.”

These recommendations did not seem controversial to her, but when she completed and published the report, she was asked to pause dissemination.

Victoria acknowledges that part of decolonising the curriculum and university concerns navigating institutional spaces and practices like those described above. Noting that universities are often sites of struggle and inequity, she observed institutional resistance to suggested changes.

Some of the responses she received included:

• Competing priorities other than a focus on multilingual repertoires, such as sustainable fashion and climate change, were listed: “Not now, staff may become confused”
• The predominance of language ideologies and Anglonormativity: “if they choose to come here, they need to do it our way”; “it has to be in English”
• Questions of whether there would be a “safeguarding issue” if students are using a number of different languages
• Concerns around assessment: “How can we assess multilingual practices?”

Victoria also notes that her position as a linguist (instead of an artist) rendered her an outsider.

She was often asked, “but Victoria, what is your practice? […] [which] implies: ‘you’re not one of us, so please explain what you’re doing here.’”

Victoria’s talk reflects on both the challenges and possibilities of turning the decolonial gaze back on to the university; on students’ frustrations and experience; and on how difficult it might be to actually enact institutional change.

You can watch her full talk here.

You can also read earlier posts in this blog series:

• Let’s re-centre multilingual communities in our classrooms and research: a summary of Prof. Li Wei’s talk
• How students learn German through charity shop raids: a summary of Prof. Alison Phipps’s talk

This symposium was organised by Dr Jelena Ćalić and Dr Eszter Tarsoly on behalf of the PROLang (Policy, Research and Outreach for Language-based area studies) Research Group in collaboration with UCL Institute of Advanced Studies, with the support of CHE’s Education Enhancement Grant. This post was written by Kellynn Wee.

Classrooms are a place for learning, not for play. Teachers teach; students learn.

Actually, Professor Alison Phipps disagrees.

Alison gave an impassioned talk titled “Decolonising Multilingualism: Opacity; Justice; Joy” at Decolonising Language Studies Symposium II—a forum where scholars from a range of disciplines discuss how to decolonise the curriculum in language studies and beyond.

This post is the second part of a series where we summarise speakers’ main ideas from the symposium, which was organised by Dr Jelena Ćalić and Dr Eszter Tarsoly on behalf of PROLang.

Alison, who is Professor of Languages and Intercultural Studies at the University of Glasgow, focused on how learning new languages can be an opportunity for expressions of joy and vulnerability – if classrooms and research settings were rethought to support such emotions.

Put on a show in a new language  

On a course Alison once taught on German popular culture, she told the students that they would have to put on a play at the end of the course in German.

Students, whether studying Marx or feminist theory, eagerly prepared for the final performance through learning how to embody characters from German novels and films.

The pleasure of embodying a character and of coming together to create something was not just highly motivating, but also “great fun.” As Alison tells the story:

“They would raid all the charity shops… and they would dress up, and then they would come and perform. What I discovered they were doing through performing in the language, with the theoretical concepts, dressing up, wearing the lipstick, putting the hair up, all that adrenaline — it meant that they were taking it really seriously, they were wrapping it around, they were clothing their studies.

They were caring for [their studies] in a way that we rarely ask our students to care for their studies… It was a much wider human sense of the work.”

The students did so well that the external examiner suggested that some research should be conducted into the reasons behind their grades. In their oral exams, students talked excitedly about how much fun it was to perform and how regular rehearsal helped to structure their language learning through repetition. Some would even launch into snippets of their performances. Alison sums the experience up as follows:

“It was participatory. The whole class shared it. They really felt it was their work overall.”

Make a fool of yourself  

Another one of Alison’s stories described her volunteer work at a detention centre, where she was recruited to help translate for people housed for deportation.

To her dismay, she realised that “though I was a professor of languages… my languages were useless.” She was “way too fluent in too many colonial languages and European languages… and here I was, sitting in front of people who spoke Pashtu, who spoke Arabic…”

Instead of translating or teaching, Alison found herself becoming a student instead:

“The young guys would teach me to speak their languages and they would be helpless with laughter, because here is a professor of languages who didn’t even know their language existed, and in that moment, there was an equalising… The dignity of language was restored to a group of people utterly stripped of their dignity, and they were laughing at me. I was the learner, and I was stumbling.”

Alison says that part of the work of decolonisation is to “centre the understanding and knowledges of the communities that you are with, and this is a fundamental decolonising move.”

She adds:

“All the things I’d learned about ethnography, and language learning, and performance… is that all of them require you to make a fool of yourself. All of them require you to know nothing. All of them require you to make many, many, many mistakes. A central concept in ethnography is naïveté, the ethnographic naivety: you do not know, you are not an expert, you decentre yourself.

It’s a move that’s vital to interculturality. We are required to decentre ourselves in any intercultural framework to be able to understand from the perspective of others, and so I realised that this decentring might also be useful in the [detention] centre.”

Recognise that language is a gift

Alison recounts other stories, working in places like Ghana or the Gaza Strip where she felt — through experiences of incompetence and inarticulation — how we rely on others to speak for us, or to teach us how to speak.

She says that part of the work of decolonising the curriculum is:

“The attempt by one human being to have a go, to render themselves vulnerable, to laugh at themselves and be laughed at, to stumble through that pronunciation and to be in a place where a new set of relationships might be made and made collectively…

Because there isn’t a word I speak that I haven’t been given by other people, and if I expand that to the context of language learning and language education, then that, my friends, is how I believe we […] find what might be found when we improvise and make things together.”

Alison rounds up her talk by speaking about how she wants to create spaces that are “responsive to dignity, that are fun, and that will allow us collectively to hold that bowl of tears in ways which are safe and ethical and expand a space for joy.”

Alison’s talk was followed by Victoria Odeniyi’s reflections on the challenges and opportunities of embedding research findings into institutional practice: how a university might say things like, “not now, the staff might become confused”, or “this doesn’t align with university policy and standards”, and how we might react to that in turn.

Want to read about Victoria’s presentation? Keep an eye out for the third part of our blog post series, featuring summaries of speakers’ key points, by subscribing to our blog (link on the right) or following us on Twitter.

Watch Alison Phipps’s full talk here.

You can also read an earlier post in the blog series here:

• Let’s re-centre multilingual communities in our classrooms and research: a summary of Prof. Li Wei’s talk

This symposium was organised by Dr Jelena Ćalić and Dr Eszter Tarsoly on behalf of the PROLang (Policy, Research and Outreach for Language-based area studies) Research Group in collaboration with UCL Institute of Advanced Studies, with the support of CHE’s Education Enhancement Grant. This post was written by Kellynn Wee.

How can we decolonise the curriculum in higher education?

As educators, we often hear this call – and many of us rise to respond to it as a crucial part of our research and practice. Yet spaces where we can share our experience and practices with each other are rare, especially across disciplines.

On 25 October 2023, a symposium on Decolonising Language Studies, organised by Dr Jelena Ćalić and Dr Eszter Tarsoly on behalf of PROLang, sought to address this gap by inviting a prominent group of researchers with diverse disciplinary backgrounds, including linguistics, cultural studies, social sciences and politics, to respond to questions such as:

• How can we bring the study of minoritised groups, linguistic citizenship and transcultural becoming to the fore in language education?
• How can participatory initiatives translate into policy and be better embedded into institutional settings?
• How committed are institutions and researchers to progressive agendas, both in our research scope and our methodology?
• How can we better include community members as co-authors and fellow researchers in our work?

In this blog post series showcasing the symposium’s key takeaways, here’s our summary of Professor Li Wei’s take on the topic.

Prof. Li Wei is the Director and Dean of the Institute of Education (UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society), and he gave a talk that focused on how sociolinguistists and applied linguists can engage in decolonising the curriculum.

Centring participatory practices

Li Wei argues that the social responsibilities of linguists should include not only the analysis of linguistic structures but also the pursuit of social justice through investigating and understanding the interplay of language practices and the social worlds of speakers. As he puts it:

“We are observing participants trying to make sense of their world in a real-life situation. By trying to make sense of them trying to make sense of their lives, we are participating in their social world as well. That is quite an important point: their social world becomes part of ours, and ours becomes part of theirs.”

By simply embarking on a research project, researchers have an influence on (and a responsibility for) the people with whom they work. The process of research should not objectify the communities we study—and researchers should not position themselves at a distance.

This is particularly salient in an era of mobility and superdiversity: as Li Wei puts it, “We see our responsibility as participating in a social debate over the value of multilingualism and over the consequences of a community coming together.”

Acknowledging subjectivity in knowledge production 

Researchers should revisit the tenet that analysis must be objective, contained, and distant. Analysis is not a mere presentation of objective facts existing “out there”. As Li Wei says:

“We are presenting our analysis of what we have observed, which is necessarily subjective, because we all come into our analyses from our own trajectories and backgrounds and ideologies — and we should not be afraid to say that this is my own understanding, this is my interpretation, and to open it up to challenges as well.”

Instead, researchers should be open and explicit about their socio-cultural, political, ideological stance when they present their interpretation and analysis, and, as Li Wei suggests, “invite the reader to participate in our analysis as a social act.”

Rethinking multilingualism as a strength

Can we move beyond merely ‘allowing’ different languages to be used in the classroom?

Li Wei suggests that we should think of different languages not just as additive, but as constitutive, in a shift towards a translanguaging stance:

“The stance we want to move towards is a perspective that views multilingual language learners’ linguistic practices and their racial/ethnic identities together. It’s all integrated, together with the sociolinguistic realities of the community and the educational demands of the school.”

When we label a group of speakers’ practices as “foreign” or “second language” or having “English as an additional language”, it has serious educational consequences in schools, as these names and categories carry specific socio-political connotations beyond simple linguistic labels.

Through approaching teaching as co-learning, we can reset power relations within the classroom and challenge dominant language ideologies.

Additionally, students learn in many different languages beyond the classroom. Li Wei says:

“We tend not to pay any attention to the source of the information they get, or what language they are actually doing the learning in outside the lecture theatre. How can we incorporate that knowledge that is gained through different languages and different cultural contexts into the teaching and learning in the university?”

Li Wei’s talk was followed by Alison Phipps’s presentation on outside-of-the-box learning practices such as how students can get good marks through raiding charity shops, why researchers should make fools of themselves, and how to hold a bowl of tears.

If you’re intrigued, keep an eye out for the second part of our blog post series, featuring summaries of speakers’ key points, by subscribing to our blog (link on the right!) or follow us on Twitter.

Want to listen to Prof. Li Wei’s full talk, titled “Participatory Linguistics in the Translanguaging Framework: Towards decolonising linguistics and language education”? Click here to check it out.

This symposium was organised by Dr Jelena Ćalić and Dr Eszter Tarsoly on behalf of the PROLang (Policy, Research and Outreach for Language-based area studies) Research Group in collaboration with UCL Institute of Advanced Studies, with the support of CHE’s Education Enhancement Grant. This post was written by Kellynn Wee.