Modern Languages at Aberdeen University

Everyone in Languages at Stirling, and beyond, has been very concerned to read about developments across Languages, Translation and Interpreting at the University of Aberdeen and we wanted to express our solidarity with our colleagues there, across French, Gaelic, German and Spanish.

We have a long history of connections and friendship (academic and otherwise) with Aberdeen and we hope to be able to continue to see those connections and friendships thrive over the coming months and years.

We have co-supervised and continue to co-supervise PhDs together: our former student, Fraser McQueen, currently at the University of Bristol where he is a Lecturer in French and Comparative Literature, was jointly supervised by Fiona Barclay (Stirling) and Nadia Kiwan (Aberdeen). Aedín ní Loingsigh (Stirling) is currently co-supervising a SGSAH-funded student in Translation Studies with Nadia and Nicki Hitchcott (St Andrews). Others of us have taught or, indeed, studied at Aberdeen: Cristina Johnston was a Teaching Fellow in French there in 2004-2006 before joining Stirling, while Pete Baker and Fiona Noble (both now in Spanish and Latin American Studies at Stirling) studied there as undergraduates. Pete’s PhD was supervised by mentors who had taught him at Aberdeen, while Fiona stayed on at Aberdeen to complete her MLitt, PhD and PGDE, as well as working there as a Teaching Fellow. Our (now retired) colleague, Alastair Duncan, also did both his undergraduate degree and his PhD at Aberdeen.

We’ve been involved in external examining at each other’s institutions which has often led to research collaborations between colleagues: Trevor Stack (Aberdeen) was one of our externals in Religion at Stirling for many years, Nina Parish (Stirling) is a current external at Aberdeen. And we’ve been delighted to welcome colleagues from Aberdeen to speak at research events over the years, most recently Ed Welch, who is also Chair of the University Council of Modern Languages (Scotland), with Stirling colleagues, including Nina Parish, Pete Baker and Elizabeth Ezra also having given research papers in Aberdeen.

‘Aberdeen 2040’, the University’s strategic plan (available in Arabic, Gaelic, BSL and Braille, as well as in English), proudly asserts that: ‘Through outreach and the exchange of ideas, we will teach and research across borders. We already rank among the best for our global outlook. We will continue to expand our networks and partnerships, and seek new opportunities for international and intercultural exchange.’ These are fantastic aims for any global University to be working towards and achieving them is dependent on Universities being able to support ambitious, resilient, interculturally literate graduates, equipped with the wide range of skills that will allow them to contribute to local and global communities. These skills are precisely those that are fostered through the study of languages, from Gaelic to German, from French to Spanish, and far, far beyond.

We hope that Aberdeen finds ways to support colleagues across Languages as they work on creative solutions to the extremely challenging circumstances they are facing and we look forward to finding more ways to work with them over the months that lie ahead.

Spain, Colombia, Sicily… and back to Stirling again

Yesterday’s blog catch-up came from Erin who graduated earlier this year with a BA Hons in French and is now at the end of the first semester her MSc in International Conflict and Cooperation with us. Today, another opportunity to catch-up with one of our graduates but this time someone who has been away from Stirling for much longer. David graduated in 2017, with a BA Hons in French and Spanish, and has been a regular blog contributor over the years (we’ll link to some of his previous posts in this update so you can read more about his adventures). From January, he’ll be back in Stirling, starting his PhD under the supervision of Fiona Barclay:

“Last time I posted something on here was at the start of the global Covid-19 pandemic, when I had to return to Paris from Glasgow, to finish up my PGDE and graduate online – a very strange reality in which I started teaching in August 2020. After three years of teaching full time, I decided to return to studying and complete a PhD at the University of Stirling, almost 10 years after having left! Let me just rewind a little.

Born and raised in Paris, I was always attracted to living in Scotland as I used to go there regularly as a child (I am getting old…) to visit family. Scotland was always, and still is, renowned for its innovative, modern and forward-looking approach to higher education. I chose to attend the University of Stirling from 2013 as I would have had the opportunity to become a dual-qualified language teacher in just four years. However, the course was under review (it is now very much still in existence!) and I ended up graduating with an honours degree in French and Spanish. During my second year at Stirling, I was asked if I would be interested in completing a PhD after graduating. While I was flattered that I had been asked, I was quite taken aback, as I did not feel that I had the skills or knowledge… I had imposter syndrome! Thus, I declined the offer and focused on my undergraduate studies (although I did sometimes think “what if..?”).

However, during my third year at university, I was able to live, study and work in Spain for a full academic year as part the Erasmus+ programme and this is where I found a renewed passion for language learning but also academia as I had the opportunity to study a wide range of subjects in Spanish: sociolinguistics, heritage conservation as well as mythology! From then on in, I was hooked.

Upon graduating, I decided to work abroad in Colombia as part of the British Council language assistantship programme. To optimise my chances of being selected, I ticked the “send me anywhere” box. I was chosen to teach at a university in the coffee region of Colombia and it was life-changing from an academic point of view: I was treated like a university lecturer although I was only 21 years old and had only graduated one month previously! I discovered the research side of teaching and was given the opportunity to research and improve my teaching through interdisciplinary academic discussions, collaboration and conferences. 

Nevertheless, I was still sceptical about my academic ability and wanted to see if I could perhaps gain more experience as a secondary school teacher to, not only challenge myself further from a teaching standpoint, but also apply the skills I had learnt in Colombia while simultaneously developing my own interpersonal skills through my own language learning. So I applied for a second year as a language assistant to work and live in Italy. Once again, I ticked the “send me anywhere” box and was sent to… Sicily! I taught in two local high schools there and, while I did not speak a word of Italian when I first arrived, after a few months my Spanish slowly turned into Italian (including a bit of Sicilian slang apparently, unbeknownst to me!). Having studied at the University of Catania to improve my grammar, I then came back to Scotland, confident that I was ready to teach at high school level (although higher education had been at the back of my mind since Colombia…). 

My PGDE year was interrupted due to the Covid-19 pandemic which is when I first experienced the advantages and challenges of online teaching as both a student and a teacher! As a newly qualified teacher applying for my probationary year I could choose 5 different local authorities and as an international student I did not have a specific school in mind. I therefore ticked the “anywhere” box (does that sound familiar?), hoping to go somewhere new and ironically I was appointed to a school in the southside of Glasgow – I did not even have to change flat!

There were no permanent posts available at the end of my year teaching at St. Ninian’s and so I applied to several schools across Scotland. It was a very stressful time as I was in competition with my PGDE peers as well as teachers with a significant amount of experience. There are an incredible number of social codes and professional expectations which teacher training does not prepare you for! Indeed, interviewing is a skill in itself, regardless of one’s teaching ability. 

After a few awkward online interviews and Q&A sessions, I was offered a permanent position at Lomond School in Helensburgh. There, I was able to further develop my teaching while also completing my provisional registration in Italian by following an evening course at the University of Strathclyde. However, I missed academia and research. Thus, I decided to complete my Masters in Education while teaching full-time. After lots of coffee, complaining and maybe two (or three?) late nights, I submitted my thesis, expecting the worst! 

One month later, I received a notification informing me that I had been awarded a first class in my thesis and the University of Glasgow asked me if I would be interested in publishing it. I think that publishing my masters was a key moment last year for me as it enabled me to shake off the imposter syndrome which I tend to carry around with me! 

Finally, I was invited this year to apply for a PhD at the University of Stirling, in collaboration with the language organisation SCILT, to investigate the effect of the 1+2 Initiative on language uptake. I was delighted when I was selected and while it is strange to think that I will be leaving teaching in December, I am looking forward to returning to the University of Stirling where I was first introduced to Higher Education and challenged academically.”

Many thanks to David for having found the time to send us this blog post – we’re looking forward to welcoming you back in the New Year!

Saying goodbye to colleagues

Last Friday members of the French programme met to mark the end of Dr Ashley Harris‘s time at Stirling. Ashley arrived in Stirling in July 2022 to take up a role as Postdoctoral Research Fellow on Fiona Barclay‘s AHRC Follow-on Funding ‘Remembering Empire‘ project. She has previously worked at the University of Surrey, where she was a Teaching Fellow in French Studies, and at Queen’s University Belfast, where she lectured for three years following the completion of her PhD there.

At Belfast Ashley was the recruitment lead for French, including schools outreach and event organisation. That experience stood her in good stead on ‘Remembering Empire’, where the project team created and delivered two new courses to pupils of different ages across seven schools. Ashley also worked with our six wonderful student mentors and, with schools across Stirling and Glasgow, she did plenty of travelling!

As well as working on ‘Remembering Empire’, Ashley supported the French team at Stirling, teaching our first and second year language and culture modules, as well as supervising research projects and examining in oral language assessments. In April we had the chance to hear about her research on the ‘media author’, when she talked about her work on French authors Virginie Despentes, Michel Houellebecq and Frédéric Beigbeder at one of the Division of Literature and Language’s research seminars.

Ashley is leaving us to work on completing a book based on her research. We’re sorry to see her go but can’t wait to read it!

Come and do a PhD with us!

We’re delighted to announce that Fiona Barclay has been successful in securing funding for a PhD student to carry out the first evaluation of the Scottish Government’s 1+2 languages policy. Fully funded through the Scottish Graduate School of Arts and Humanities‘ Collaborative Doctoral Award scheme, the successful student will be supervised by Fiona and colleagues at Glasgow University’s School of Education, in collaboration with SCILT, Scotland’s National Centre for Languages. 

This is an exceptional opportunity for a strong PhD student to make an important contribution to knowledge about Scotland’s evolving languages landscape and we warmly encourage applications from candidates with a grounding in areas related to languages and education.

The award is available on a full-time basis for a period of 3 years and 6 months, from 1^st October 2023 until 31^st March 2027. It includes an annual stipend of £18,622, plus a CDA allowance of £600 towards travel costs to the partner organisation. The successful applicant may also apply for additional funding directly from SGSAH to attend conferences and undertake additional skills development.

If this sounds like you, please see the advert for full details. And get your applications in quickly – the deadline is 5 June 2023!

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!

France recognises a 60-year-old massacre: Fiona Barclay on France 24

2022 marks the 60^th anniversary of the end of the Algerian War, arguably the moment that defined the end of France’s imperial ambitions when the state withdrew its forces after almost 8 years of war, and almost a million settlers of European origin fled Algeria for France. It also happens to coincide with the Presidential elections, which take place in two rounds in April. Traditionally, the leading candidates have felt the need to reach out to prospective voters by pronouncing on various aspects of France’s colonial history, and this year is no exception.

On Wednesday 26 January, Emmanuel Macron gave a speech in which he acknowledged a massacre that took place on 26 March 1962 in the rue d’Isly in Algiers, in which 46 French civilians were shot dead by soldiers of the French army, and around 200 were injured. It’s an event that has become emblematic for the settler community, who regard it as a decisive moment that demonstrated that the settlers could no longer be safe in Algeria. As such, many credit it with precipitating the mass exodus to France. Despite the number of casualties, the families of the victims feel that the massacre has never had the kind of official recognition that they sought: they see it as analogous to Bloody Sunday, the infamous shootings that took place ten years later in Derry, and demand a public enquiry similar to that which led to the Saville Report. Macron’s speech, in which he said that the massacre was ‘unforgivable’ for the French Republic and called for a reconciliation with the repatriated settlers, or pieds-noirs, goes some way to acknowledging the long-held hurts but is unlikely to satisfy everyone.

Our colleague, Fiona Barclay, who is a specialist working on representations of the French settlers of Algeria, and who recently published an article on the rue d’Isly massacre, was interviewed on France 24 about Macron’s speech. You can find more of France 24’s coverage of President Macron’s hugely significant speech here.

First blog post of 2022!

It’s possibly getting a little late in the month for this but, nevertheless, bonne année à tous et à toutes! Our semester is about to get underway at Stirling and we’re looking forward to welcoming back our students after the festive break. We’re also looking forward to hearing from our students on Study Abroad in their various corners of the Francophone (and, in some cases, Hispanophone) globe and hoping to be able to post tales of their travels over the coming months.

In the meantime, we just wanted to say bonjour and to let you know that there’s lots going on in French at Stirling and lots of news to share, from new articles by colleagues to news about Erasmus teaching exchanges via exciting upcoming activities involving our fantastic Language Ambassadors and many other things besides so keep an eye on the blog.

And, to kick things off, if one of your New Year’s resolutions happened to involve plans to continue to brush up on your languages (whether that means French, Spanish or something else), we wanted to remind you that you can take advantage of the new year with Language-Swap, Stirling’s language-learning initiative, created by our colleague Fiona Barclay, which puts you in touch with native speakers of other languages right here on campus. The idea is simple: you learn a new language or improve on an existing one with a native speaker and teach them your language in return! It’s a fantastic way to meet new people and learn about their culture. You can swap messages and arrange to meet in person at a time that suits you. It’s free, flexible, and fun!

If you’re interested in becoming a Language-Swap member, click here for more information and to register.

More news to come soon but, in the meantime, bon weekend!

French at Stirling: Confidence, Communication, Travel

We’re all getting ready to welcome our new students who’ll be joining us in just a few weeks, and to welcome back continuing students, but that also means saying goodbye to those who’ve just graduated and who are off to other things and other climes. It’s a busy time for them all but we’re delighted to be able to post this article by Emily, who just graduated in French and History and who has taken the time to reflect on her five years with us, before heading off to start a postgrad course in a couple of weeks:

‘It feels a wee bit strange writing this post for the French at Stirling blog, as it’s the last one I’ll write as a student at Stirling before I start a Masters at a different university. Honestly, I can’t quite believe it, it seems like last week that we were all lined up outside Pathfoot A96 for our first introductory lecture. I certainly don’t think that any of us then could have predicted how our studies would end up finishing this year with the pandemic!

Now that I’ve got the degree, I think I can admit that Stirling wasn’t initially my first choice, but in the end, it was definitely the right one. I remember coming to an open day way back in 2016 with my dad and loving the uni and its location straight away, and this only grew when I started my studies. First and second year seemed to go by in a flash, and although I maybe spent too much time going out and not enough studying, I wouldn’t change any of it for the world. During these first two years away from home, I met some of the best people who have gone on to become some of my closest friends, which I think is just as important as good grades, if not more.

That being said, after reaching the halfway mark, I decided that it would be a good idea to take a year out to work in France as an English Language Assistant to improve my French, but more importantly, to eat my body weight in cheese and croissants. I was placed in lycée in a wee village in Brittany, and even though I’m not planning on going into full-time teaching, this role taught me loads, and it really was one of the best things I’ve done in my life so far.

However, it wouldn’t be entirely honest if I painted it as all sunshine and roses. Moving to a completely new country, having to speak another language and adapt to new cultures and customs can be really hard at times, and I know I had my fair share of ups and downs along the way. Despite the difficulties however, I wouldn’t hesitate in recommending it to any current French students who get the opportunity, because you get so much more out of it than just improving your French skills. I won’t use that gap-year cliché and say that I ‘found myself’ during my year abroad, but I feel that I did quite a bit of growing up while I was away, and that I came back a more independent and understanding person. Even if you learn nothing else while away, meeting new people that you wouldn’t have met otherwise and learning to understand their perspectives is always going to be worth it.

Taking a year out really helped my French skills, but after it I was really looking forward to getting back into uni. I think that a lot of people, myself included, feel the pressure being turned up in third year with results counting towards our final degree, but now when I look back on 2019, especially with everything that’s happened in the last year, I can’t help but see it as some sort of golden age when we could actually sit together in classrooms without social distancing, when in reality it was still quite difficult! In third year we also had the opportunity to participate in an Erasmus exchange, and so I spent that spring semester at the Université de Limoges in Nouvelle-Aquitaine. It was nice to experience French education as a student instead of a teacher, and although it was cut short because of the pandemic, it was still a really fun experience.

And so, that brings me onto my final year at Stirling. I think everyone had their highs and lows during this year: not having to commute and being able to wear PJs to class was nice, but not seeing any classmates or lecturers and being stuck inside for a whole year? Not so good. Despite all of our classes and lectures being online, the staff in the language department did a really good job at trying to make the year as normal as they could for us. Hopefully we’ll eventually get an in-person graduation ceremony so we can actually see each other in real life instead of through a screen, and celebrate the fact that we made it through the toughest year of uni – during a global pandemic no less.

Over the last 5 years, the question I’ve probably been asked the most in regards to my degree is ‘what are you going to do with that?’, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s heard this. Still, I never get tired of explaining to people that actually there are so many options with a language degree, and you get a lot more from it than just a second language. It teaches you how to be confident, how to communicate effectively, and it also teaches you that making mistakes is okay!

So, what am I going to do with it? Well, the next step for me will be in September, when I’m due to start a master’s degree in publishing at Edinburgh Napier. I’ve decided to go down this route because I feel that I’ll be able to put a lot of the skills that I’ve learned through my degree into use in a career in publishing, potentially in international rights or marketing. But before all that, I’ll be working over the summer as an optical consultant and a French and History tutor!

Before I finish, I would like to take the time to thank all of the amazing lecturers that have taught and helped me over the last 5 years: Cristina Johnston, Elizabeth Ezra, Mathilde Mazau, Brigitte Depret, Jean-Michel DesJacques, Fiona Barclay, Bill Marshall, David Murphy, Fanny Lacôte, and everyone else in the Language Department who I’ve come across whether it be in an exam or just in the corridor! THANK YOU!’

Many, many thanks to Emily for such a great article and for the kind words, and we all wish you all the best for the postgrad course this coming year and for life beyond that. Keep in touch and best wishes!

Congratulations!

Many, many congratulations to our PhD student Fraser McQueen who passed his viva yesterday. Fraser’s thesis (“Race, Religion, and Communities of Friendship: Contemporary French Islamophobia in Literature and Film”) was supervised by Fiona Barclay, Nadia Kiwan (at Aberdeen University) and Cristina Johnston (as well as by David Murphy, in the early stages of the research). We look forward to celebrating with you soon, Fraser!

And if you want to read more of Fraser’s work, you can check out his articles in The Conversation here or his most recent article in Modern and Contemporary France on Christophe Guilluy and Michel Houellebecq here.

Mid-Semester Catch-Up Time

Regular blog readers will notice that there’s something of a pattern to when posts go up here, with a flurry of articles and news in the build-up to new semesters and then over the first few weeks but then, as work intensifies for everyone, the pace of posts slows a bit. And then suddenly it’s the mid-semester break and there’s a little bit more time for some updates before teaching starts again, and we realise that there are lots of snippets of news to pass on so here goes.

Teaching in French at Stirling has all been online for the first half of this semester and, as was the case last year, we’ve all been impressed and pleased by how well our students have adapted to the online environment. It’s not easy for any of us and, speaking for everyone in the French at Stirling teaching team, we’re really missing being back in the classroom, chatting to students, bumping into people between classes… However, for the time being, everything remains online and will do until the end of teaching in April, at least, and we’re grateful to our students for their patience and enthusiasm.

As well as adapting to our own Stirling teaching online, for our Semester 6 students, there has been a very particular process of adaptation because, under normal circumstances, most of them would have been away on Study Abroad this semester. However, given the current situation, that wasn’t possible. Instead, our Semester 6 students are benefitting from extra conversation sessions organised by our language team, as well as attending online classes at our partner institutions across France, at the Universities of Lorraine, Aix-Marseille and Tours, as well as at ESSEC Business School and Sciences-Po (Paris, Menton and Dijon).

That’s not to say it’s always straightforward for these students. As Nela, a Semester 6 International Management with European Languages and Society student explains: ‘Studying abroad during the pandemic has been a bit challenging, especially in the beginning. I had trouble figuring out the new platform and the work methodology of the Université de Lorraine. What has been extremely useful, though, was setting up a Facebook messenger group with the rest of the people from Stirling that are going through the same process than me. We can support eachother, chat about our new lecturers, and stay more engaged that way!’ A good bit of intercultural understanding to apply but, as ever, our students are rising to the challenge and finding ways to work through the current circumstances.

What else? Well, earlier in the semester, our colleague, Fiona Barclay, gave a fantastic research paper to our Literature and Languages seminar series entitled ‘Instrumentalising ghosts: the case of the French settlers of Algeria’. Fiona’s paper examined the ways in which the pied-noir community in France represents the present-day embodiment of the colonial legacies which continue to haunt the Mediterranean space between the modern nations of France and Algeria. Our PhD student Fraser McQueen’s excellent article ‘Christophe Guilluy’s France Périphérique and the absence of race from Michel Houellebecq’s Sérotonine’ has just been published in Modern and Contemporary France. Nina Parish just gave a paper with Emma Wagstaff (Birmingham) on ‘Editing Bilingual Poetry Anthologies in 2020’ as part the Extended Conference on ‘Interpreting 21^st-Century Poetry’, organised by La Sapienza University in Rome, the Universitá di Siena, the University of Warwick and the journal Polisemie. And, just before the mid-semester break, Hannah Grayson co-organised a workshop on ‘Languages of Disease in the Contemporary Francophone World’, under the auspices of the IMLR in London, in collaboration with Steven Wilson of Queen’s University Belfast.

And looking ahead to the rest of the semester, what do we have coming up? Nina Parish is organising a translation apéro to mark International Women’s Day on 8^th March, in collaboration with Sandra Daroczi at Bath and involving students from both institutions. Julie Hugonny and our PhD student Lauren Kenny are also organising a series of events that we’ll be hosting over the last three weeks of March around the theme of French Sci-Fi. Events and activities will include a talk on the origins of French sci-fi by Julie, a round-table discussion/Q&A on a French sci-fi film that Elizabeth Ezra will also be part of, and a fun quiz/games session. And Jean-Michel DesJacques and Cristina Johnston have been working with one of our Year 2 French and Spanish students, Beth, who is applying for a Stevenson Exchange Scholarship for next year. On croise les doigts!

More news to come over the weeks ahead (including, I’m delighted to say, updates from students, past and present) but there we go, for starters!