Volunteering with displaced people in Calais

This will be the last blog post for a few weeks but it seems appropriate, a day or two before graduation, to round off this latest flurry of posts with news about what we’re proud one of our finalists, Morgan, is doing this Summer:

‘In Calais, I’m volunteering with an organisation called Utopia 56. Unlike other organisations here that mainly focus on food, water and clothing distribution, at Utopia we have a helpline number that the displaced people in Calais can call at any time day or night. We can take them to doctor’s appointments, find them temporary accommodation and help with any questions they may have, especially when they are new in the area. 

I’ve not been here for long yet but it’s already been such an eye-opening experience, both meeting so many interesting people and seeing how the different volunteer organisations come together to support the displaced people of Calais. 

Many persons here are near the end of their journeys, having been forced to leave their homes and travel hundreds of miles in harsh conditions. Despite the Calais Jungle officially closing in 2016, there remains a steady population of displaced persons in Calais; with no safe routes available for those who want to seek asylum in the UK, most trying to reach the UK will end up in Calais on their journey. This means that there is still a need for volunteer organisations here, who are all doing the jobs that the French and British governments are failing to do: provide food, clothing, water, shelter, advice, phones and so much more. 

If you ever have a couple of weeks, a month, or longer to spare, there are many amazing organisations in Calais that could use the help. From chopping vegetables, sorting clothing donations and distributing water to giving out phones and sim cards and creating safe spaces in the city centre for the displaced persons to visit, your time would be well spent.’

Many, many thanks to Morgan for this post and for getting involved in this way.

More blog posts to follow in a few weeks but, for the moment, bonnes vacances!

End of semester round-up

There has been lots going on across French at Stirling these past few months, as you’ll have gathered from recent posts. Before the blog goes quiet for a couple of weeks of annual leave, we wanted to just bring you up-to-speed with a couple of pieces of news…

Congratulations to Fiona Barclay who was awarded £100K AHRC Follow-on Funding for Impact and Engagement for a project called ‘Remembering Empire’ that aims to reach new audiences with the findings of the earlier project on ‘Narratives and Representations of the French Settlers of Algeria.’ The project will run for 12 months from 1 July and we’ll be posting more about it once it’s fully up and running.

Elizabeth Ezra, meanwhile, was recently interviewed on the BBC Radio 4 programme Thinking Allowed about her book Shoe Reels: The History and Philosophy of Footwear in Film (Edinburgh University Press; co-edited with Catherine Wheatley). The interview is available here on BBC Sounds (the discussion with Elizabeth begins at 18:20).

Over the next few weeks, Cristina Johnston and Aedín ní Loingsigh will be working on the final stages of a paperback edition of Lilian Thuram’s La Pensée blanche that they co-translated with David Murphy last year. Cristina and Aedín gave a joint paper on their experience of collaborative translation and questions of who translates whom as part of Stirling’s Centre for Interpreting, Translation and Intercultural Studies research seminars a couple of months ago.

And last week, Cristina Johnston delivered a training session on Feedback and Assessment in Higher Education for doctoral students. The session was part of a series of workshops on Learning and Teaching that is jointly organised by Pallavi Joshi and Jordan McCullough on behalf of the British and Irish subject associations for French Studies, ASMCF and ADEFFI.

More to follow soon, not least by way of a catch-up on Nina Parish’s recent research trips to Armenia and Poland… Busy times all round!

New French at Stirling research projects

Following on from the updates from our fantastic finalists, a few more updates but from colleagues this time, starting with Fraser McQueen who has been working with us as a Lecturer in French this past year:

“I’ve been fortunate enough to see a couple of things I’ve been working on for a while come to fruition over the past couple of weeks. Firstly, I’ve now signed a book contract with Liverpool University Press for my first monograph, which will be entitled Towards a Community of Friendship? Contemporary French Islamophobia in Literature and Film. The book will be based on my PhD thesis, which I also wrote at Stirling. I’d been working on the proposal since January (shortly after graduating in December), so it’s nice to have signed the contract, even if it’s only now that the real work of actually converting the thesis into a book starts!

Equally excitingly, after applying in April, I’ve been granted a ten-month postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Edinburgh’s Institute for the Advanced Study of the Humanities, which will start in August. My project will be entitled ‘Colonial Continuities in the Literature of the French Far Right’. It will read novels written by writers associated with the French far right during the colonial period alongside others by writers associated with the contemporary far right. Its main aim will be to explore what this comparative perspective can tell us about how colonial discourses continue to structure a modern-day far-right imaginary that has increasingly penetrated the mainstream in France and beyond. Following the unprecedented gains made by the Rassemblement national in France’s recent legislative elections, the project could hardly be more timely. Two areas of particular interest will be the relationship between Islamophobia and antisemitism and discourses around gender.

I’m excited to get started on both projects and very grateful to the colleagues at Stirling who helped me with both applications. After submitting the final version of my thesis in September, I spent last year as a lecturer in French at Stirling, and will be sad to leave behind both those colleagues and the students I’ve got to know over the past year. I’m sure that I’ll stay in touch, though, and it’s great to know that I can get back to working on new research!”

Many thanks to Fraser for sending through this blog post and, firstly, thank you for having been a such an excellent colleague and, secondly, congratulations both on the book contract and the post-doc. We look forward to hearing more about both in in due course and do keep in touch!

2022 Finalists and their plans

Our annual post about our fantastic finalists and their plans for life after graduation has become something of a blog tradition (see 2021 here, for example, or 2020 here) and this year is no different. As this year’s finalists prepare for their graduation ceremonies next week, it’s great to be able to share their thoughts and plans for what lies ahead so here goes…

Morgan, who’ll be graduating in International Politics with Languages, is spending her summer volunteering in Calais and working in the refugee camp there (keep an eye on the blog for Morgan’s own post about that). At the end of the Summer, she’ll be off to Belfast to start an MA in Conflict Transformation and Social Justice at Queen’s University. And Pauline, who is also graduating with a BA Hons in International Politics with Languages is spending her Summer working as an intern in the European Parliament, working for an independent MEP. From October, she will be doing a trilingual Master in Applied European governance and policymaking, based in Nice, Kent and Berlin. Sophie, who has just completed her BA Hons in French and Spanish, is also continuing with her studies and is starting a BA in Theology and Christian Leadership at Missio Dei college which has affiliation with the University of Chester. Sophie will also be working with her church in Stirling to manage their social media and communications. As she says, this is a bit different from her degree work but she will have the opportunity to use her French and Spanish on missions trips and will also get the opportunity to learn Hebrew and Greek.

Finn will be graduating in French and Marketing next week and has a part-time field sales role with Fuel10k, an up-and-coming breakfast/cereal brand who also do their fair share of charity and environmental work that has led them to become the first cereal B-Corp brand. Finn’s cycling career is also going well and we’re delighted to be able to report that he has been selected to represent Scotland at the Commonwealth Games this August in Birmingham. He’s also got some big races coming up on the continent, as well as throughout the UK, so we’ll all be keeping our fingers firmly crossed. Then there’s Brendan, who’s graduating in French and Spanish, and who we’re really pleased to say will be returning to Stirling in the Autumn for this to work on our Master’s programme in TESOL. Like Brendan, Ceinwen is also planning future postgraduate studies as she looks forward to a research Master’s, building on her BA Hons in French, and both Muirne and Vasiliki, who will be graduating in Business Studies and French, are also planning postgraduate studies. Muirne will be starting a Master’s in International Business in September and Vasiliki intends to undertake a Master’s in Business based in Madrid, as well as being interested in an internship or a future career that would involve translation further down the line. And Sofia, whose degree was in French and Spanish, is planning a Master’s in South Asian Area Studies at SOAS where she hopes to research the transmission of intergenerational trauma in Asian women in the UK.

As for Maria, who has also just completed her BA Hons in Business Studies and French, at the moment she is working for her family’s business and she hopes to secure a job in Human Resources by the end of September. Maria is currently looking for positions both using French and English and hopes to secure one where she will still be able to practise her French on a daily basis. As part of her degree, Maria spent a semester at our partner institution ESSEC Business School in Cergy-Pontoise and her tip for future languages graduates is to make the most of Study Abroad in job applications because it gives you a real advantage as a candidate. And then we have Jackie, who’ll be graduating with her BA Hons in English Studies and French, and who is currently back home in Chicago with a very busy schedule, working full-time at a hair salon, part-time as a gymnastics coach, and working on writing her seventh book in her spare time. Jackie has been independently publishing books since she was 18, and her goal is to one day become a full-time author. She would love to be able to write full-time and travel around Scotland, France, and more of Europe once she has the savings to do so. Her current plan is to work and save money for a year or two, and then hopefully spend some time in France to really get fluent. As if all that wasn’t enough, Jackie is also currently taking an online TEFL course so would love to build on that in France as well.

Valentina has just completed her BA Hons in International Management with European Languages and Society and is already in employment, working in the finance department of our local translation and interpreting agency Global Voices. Her role is as a credit controller for the Italian and French markets so plenty of scope to continuing using her language skills in a friendly environment where they’re looking to expand their multilingual workforce. And David, who will be graduating with a BA Hons in French and History, is currently in Minnesota working as a Division Director in a summer camp until the end of August. After that, he plans to return to Stirling either to work in the heritage sector or to undertake our own Master’s in Heritage. And Courtney, who is graduating with a BA Hons in French, is continuing her current career path with a job in a pharmacy. She’ll be starting her dispensary course soon which means she can become a dispenser and will be eventually undertaking a course to become a dispensary technician. 

Caitlin, who will be graduating with a BA Hons in French, has an offer for a place on the PGDE in Primary Teaching at the University of Strathclyde, a career that has always been her goal and her dream, so she’s really looking forward to starting on her teaching career. Like Caitlin, Eilidh is also heading for a career in teaching, as she reaches the end of her BA Hons in French and Spanish with Professional Education (Secondary) and is particularly pleased to have learned that her probation year will be spent teaching in her own former high school. Shannon, who has just obtained her BA Hons in French and Spanish at Stirling, is moving on to study for a PGDE in Early years and KS1 education at Liverpool John Moores University. She has always wanted to teach primary and her time teaching in Spain through the British Council helped her decide which age she’d like to teach. Shannon hopes to let her language work influence some lesson plans in the future. And our other Caitlin, who is graduating in French and Spanish with Professional Education (Secondary) will also be beginning her probationary year in August and is very much looking forward to getting the opportunity to inspire young people to learn languages. And Lara, who has just completed her BA Hons In French and Spanish, is also off to teach but, in her case, it’ll be through the British Council English Language Assistantship scheme. Next year, she’ll be working as an ELA in the Community of Madrid to experience full immersion in Spanish language and culture and to explore the opportunity of a future career in teaching Languages. Lara is planning on reapplying next year to do the same in a French-speaking country.

And Joanna, who’ll be graduating in French and Spanish, is planning to apply for a post working with PwC and intends to begin a Master’s in either Business or Translation later next year. First and foremost, though, Joanna’s getting married in two weeks’ time and, on behalf of everyone in French at Stirling, we wish her and her partner a very happy future together!

We’ll keep adding to this post as and when updates come in from more of this year’s finalists but, as ever, this is definitely one of the most fun posts to put together and we’re really grateful to all the finalists who have been in touch so far. On behalf of everyone in French at Stirling, we wish you a fantastic graduation and all the very best for the future, and we hope you’ll keep in touch with us over the months and years ahead.

(French) Election week from over the Atlantic

It has been an intensely busy semester at Stirling which has been great, in many ways, but does also mean that our blog has been rather inactive for far too long. There’s lots of news to pass on so that’s all about to change over the coming days and weeks and, to start things off, an update from our colleague Hannah Grayson who has been conducting research in the US for the past few months:

“I currently have the privilege to be working at the Library of Congress, the world’s largest library, in Washington DC. I’m here researching the history of transatlantic journeys between sub-Saharan Africa and Brazil for a book I’m writing on Tierno Monénembo’s fiction. But a few weeks ago I had the opportunity to visit St Mary’s College Maryland with a friend and colleague whose research overlaps with mine, and to sit in on three of his classes. Dr George McLeod works on how contemporary Francophone African authors and filmmakers respond to collective and individual stories of violence.

I visited the beautiful campus of St Mary’s, which is at the end of a peninsula just 90 minutes outside of DC. It’s a relatively small liberal arts college with about 2,000 students, and similar to Stirling in some ways (very strong Arts and Humanities departments; gallery on campus; sport plays a big part in the university; it’s on the water). What made a nice change was it being warm enough to have class outside in the sun!

Students were interested to ask me about the experience of teaching in Scotland, and how our approaches and courses might differ from theirs. What I found most interesting was sitting in on a 3^rd and 4^th year class debate about the French presidential election that had just been held. I asked the students about their perspectives and how they’ve been shaped by what’s recently taken place in US politics. They had lots of interesting comments about the role of media discourse, and the importance of critical perspectives when reading French language news sources they might be less familiar with.

Not far from the campus is this recently installed memorial to the local history of enslavement. The college commissioned this piece to stand on a former plantation, and artists Shane Allbritton and Norman Lee collaborated with poet Quenton Baker to form the commemorative space.

From the information on site: ‘Rows of erasure poetry are cut from mirrored surfaces, creating an oscillation between legibility and illegibility. We experience the loss or un-speakability within fragmented historical narratives of slavery. The words of archival documents, from St Mary’s County, of historical runaway slave advertisements are “redacted” by clapboards to reveal an emergent narrative of enslaved people. The reflective nature of the walls suggests that even as viewers of the present day, we are not to penetrate the sacred private space of the enslaved people who were once present at the site.’

Monday was a federal holiday here for Juneteenth, offering yet another interesting occasion to think about Atlantic pasts and how we engage with them today.”

Many, many thanks to Hannah for the great post and pictures – enjoy the remainder of your trip! And to all blog readers: more updates to follow very soon…