Re-imagining language and communication in collaborative projects

Book Launch: Re-imagining language and communication in collaborative projects: ethnographic perspectives on the future

UCL’s Platform for Linguistic and Epistemic Justice (SSEES) and the Centre for Applied Linguistics (IoE) are very pleased to invite you to the launch of a new volume in the Routledge Critical Studies in Multilingualism series, edited by Maria Rosa Garido Sardà and Miguel Pérez-Milans.

Bringing together work from critical sociolinguistics as well as related scholarship in literary studies, social theory, and anthropology, the volume features contributions from established and emerging scholars which showcase collective initiatives whereby people reckon with the semiotic and multilingual practices that contribute to social difference while seeking to envision a radically better future. Chapters feature analyses of narratives, audiovisual artefacts, and everyday discourse in “projects of re-imagination” within such spaces as educational institutions, religious organizations, NGOs, community groups, and urban development initiatives. In focusing on social groups that are mobilized into action by reimagining the present through narratives and linguistic practices, the book highlights the disciplinary implications for sociolinguistics as a field more broadly and is of interest to scholars in sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, and linguistic anthropology, as well as related disciplines such as sociology, political science, and educational studies.

A panel including volume’s editors Maria Rosa Garido Sardà and Miguel Pérez-Milans, John Gray from UCL IoE, Jelena Ćalić from UCL SSEES led by our distinguished guest, Monica Heller, will debate the themes that emerged from the various cases within the book. The book’s key themes and findings centre on future as a construct to study social life, socially engaged scholarship and social justice.

Speakers:

Maria Rosa Garido Sardà is professora lectora in English language and linguistics at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Catalonia). Since late 2017 she has served as Book Review and Social Media Editor for the Journal of Sociolinguistics. She is author of the monograph Community, Solidarity and Multilingualism in a Social Movement: A Critical Sociolinguistic Ethnography of Emmaus (Routledge, 2021). Maria Rosa has published research articles, book chapters and blog posts in English, French and Catalan about her research on language and migration in Catalonia, the pedagogy of multilingualism, language and communication in a social movement, and language policy in a major humanitarian agency.

Miguel Pérez-Milans is Professor of Language, Discourse and Communication and Co-Director of the UCL Centre for Applied Linguistics at UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society, University College London (UK). He has been Co-President elect of the EDiSo Association for Studies on Discourse and Society, former Editor in Chief of Language Policy journal, and co-founder and former Editor of Language, Culture and Society (John Benjamins). He is currently co-Editor in Chief of London Review of Education (UCL Press) and Working Papers in Urban Language and Literacies. He is the co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Language Policy and Planning (with James Tollefson, 2018, Oxford University Press).

Monica Heller is Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto. She is a member of the Royal Society of Canada, a Past President of the American Anthropological Association and the Canadian Anthropology Society/Société canadienne d’anthropologie, and a former Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Sociolinguistics. Among her more recent publications are Éléments d’une sociolinguistique critique (2nd edition, 2023, Presses de l’ENS-Lyon), and Language, Capitalism, Colonialism: Toward a Critical History (with Bonnie McElhinny, 2017, University of Toronto Press).

John Gray is Professor of Applied Linguistics and Education in the UCL Centre for Applied Linguistics. He is the author, along with David Block and Marnie Holborow, of Neoliberalism and Applied Linguistics (2012, Routledge), Social Interaction and English Language Teacher Identity (with Tom Morton, 2018 Edinburgh University Press), and Education and the Discourse of Global Neoliberalism (edited with John P. O'Regan and Catherine Wallace, 2021). He is currently Co-Editor-in-Chief of London Review of Education.

Jelena Ćalić is Associate Professor in Serbo-Croatian (BCMS) and Applied Linguistics at School of Slavonic and East European Studies at UCL. She the author of numerous publications on language education, language policy, students’ homemaking practices in internationalised university campuses, and ethics in applied linguistics research. She is currently serving as a co-director of the UCL SSEES research center, Platform for Linguistic and Epistemic Justice (PLEJ).

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