Babylon, Center for the Study of Superdiversity (Tilburg University)
https://www.tilburguniversity.edu/research/institutes-and-research-groups/babylon/Babylon focuses on the study of linguistic, cultural, and religious diversity, as characteristics of the multicultural society. They focus on interdisciplinary and collective research efforts, in an attempt to explore the limits of current disciplinary frameworks.
Babylon also focuses on a broad range of research topics and areas, covering issues that occur at the strictly local level as well as on the global level, and creating a sound basis for comparative work and theoretical generalisation. They do so by using paradigmatic orientations towards superdiversity, complexity and mediation, with immediate contact with partners in the field.
The paradigm is superdiversity, and their activities can be summarised as Developing superdiversity as a research paradigm; Developing superdiversity as an international focus of research in a wider and interdisciplinary body of scholarship, and Giving particular attention to the superdiverse aspects of e-culture.
The Centre for Language, Discourse and Communication (King’s College London)
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/index.aspxThe centre has a wide range of expertise in the field of Language Research. These include:
Discourse, interaction, and identity
- Discourse and interaction are central to social, cultural, and institutional processes. Their research examines how identities and relations are produced in language practice, and explores theoretical, methodological, and practical implications. The four strands of research are crossing, stylisation, code-switching and mixed speech, the construction of diversity and equality in institutions, and interaction and popular culture.
- Their research on language and health spans oral and written discourse. It is centrally concerned with the public understanding of language in a range of health contexts, issues of social equality and access in the superdiverse society, and discursive accounts of risk and safety, and the body and mental health.
Ethnicity and language
- Their work on globalisation, diaspora, ethnicity, and migration connects the empirical analysis of language and discourse to contemporary cultural theory. This includes a series of funded projects on new ethnicities, schooling and urban culture; an intergenerational study of linguistic style and proficiency in a West London diaspora community; and a study text dedicated to ethnicities and language – The Language, Ethnicity and Race Reader.
The Centre for Language, Discourse and Communication and the Department of Linguistics (UWC)
In 2011-’12, the centre established a three-year programme of staff and doctoral student exchanges with the Department of Linguistics at UWC.The UWC Linguistics Department “is heir to a proud tradition at the University of the Western Cape of putting research and teaching at the service of the local community and its striving for equitable transformation”.
It has been pursuing a 10-year research programme on Multilingualism in Society, and it offers a serious engagement with diversity on a day-to-day basis, as well as an acute awareness of the importance of history in understanding multilingual dynamics, social relevance and critical involvement. The centre has particular strengths in research on language and literacy in globalisation and intercultural contact, focusing on language, literacy and discourse in everyday interaction, in education, in popular culture, in new and mass media, and medical and workplace settings. There is a substantial group of staff and research students with congruent interests in both sites, and they are very well-placed to provide each other with insight into language, change and stratification in our respective locales.
The programme is supported financially by the Hilden Charitable Fund, the Principal’s Initiative Fund, the School of Social Science and Public Policy, and the Department of Education and Professional Studies.
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/innovation/groups/ldc/news/UWC.aspx
Centre for Multilingualism in Society across the Lifespan (University of Oslo)
http://www.hf.uio.no/multiling/english/This centre’s main goal is to generate state-of-the-art scientific knowledge on individual and societal multilingualism across the lifespan that will be at the international forefront of research and will address the challenges and potentials multilingualism poses for the individual in the family, school, other institutions, and society in general.
Moreover, the centre shall provide research-based knowledge on multilingualism to central policymakers and stakeholders. The centre’s vision is to contribute to how society can deal with the challenges of multilingualism through increased knowledge, promoting agency for individuals in society, and a better quality of life, no matter what linguistic or social background.
To achieve a better understanding of multilingualism, and the individual and societal gains and challenges it poses, we will address the following major research questions:
- What characterises individual multilingual competence: how is it acquired, how does it change, and how is it impaired or potentially lost across the lifespan?
- How do various multilingual practices emerge, how are they sustained, and how do they change across the lifespan through the social and cultural activities people engage in.
- How is multilingualism in society managed across the lifespan at the group and societal level, and how do ideologies influence this management?
Centre for Research on Bilingualism (Stockholm University)
http://www.biling.su.se/english/Bilingualism and Second Language Acquisition is one of the leading research areas at Stockholm University. Research at the centre covers several profile areas.
- Second language acquisition/Swedish as a second language
- Minority languages, language policy and language ideology in Sweden
- L1 attrition and reactivation
- Interpretation (and translation)
- Transnational multilingualism in developing countries
- Bilingual development, bilingual school programmes, second language teaching, and literacy, and
- Young people’s language and language use in a multilingual context.
English Department (Ghent University)
http://www.english.ugent.be/stefslembrouckThe International Consortium for Language and Superdiversity (InCoLaS) (Max Planck Institute)
http://www.mmg.mpg.de/subsites/sociolinguistic-diversities/about/InCoLaS was formed in 2010 involving Tilburg University, King’s College London (Rampton, Harris), Birmingham University (Martin-Jones, Creese & Blackledge), Copenhagen University (Jörgensen, Madsen, Spindler-Möller, Karrebaek), UWC (Stroud, Williams), and the University of Jyväskyla (Leppänen, Westinen) as the core team; and Sydney University of Technology (Pennycook), Beijing University (Gao), University of Pennsylvania (Moore, Agha, Wortham) and Simon Fraser University (Vigouroux) as the second-line team.
InCoLaS started collaborating intensively with the Max Planck Institute for Religious and Ethnic Diversity (MPI-MMG Göttingen, Germany, director Steven Vertovec). It was incorporated into the MPI-MMG in 2012 as the Max Planck Sociolinguistic Diversity Working Group (coordinator Karel Arnaut) (see http://www.mmg.mpg.de/subsites/sociolinguistic-diversities/about/).
Since 2010, intensive synergies have led to joint (and successful) funding applications, publications, research training initiatives, sharing of student supervision as well as resources sharing. There has been intense cooperation in the context of a HERA project and SANPAD project (both successfully completed in 2012), and various project applications are currently being developed in the fields of, e.g. e-humanities, asylum-seeking, migration, and certification of skills and knowledge.
Additionally, the outspoken international dimension of the network and its activities has boosted the local research environment, enabling students and researchers to move between partner institutions.
Max Planck Institute for Religious and Ethnic Diversity (Gottingen, Germany)
http://www.mpg.de/enThe Institute is dedicated to the multi-disciplinary study of diversity in historical and contemporary societies, particularly concerning ethnic and religious forms and dynamics. Such work entails basic empirical research aimed at theoretical development.
Projects investigate multiple forms of diversity, how these have been shaped and defined, how they have been or could be governed, how different processes of inter-ethnic or inter-religious encounter unfold, how patterns and images of diversity change, and how relations between concepts of ethnicity and religion develop.
Studies address migration-related contexts (in so-called migrant-sending, -transit and -receiving societies) as well as contexts long characterised by different kinds of diversity, such as in South Africa, the Balkans, India and Southeast Asia.
