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.

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!

SGSAH Doctoral Internship for Fraser McQueen: ‘I can’t wait to get started!’

Congratulations from all of French at Stirling to our PhD student Fraser McQueen who has just found out that his application for a SGSAH Internship has been successful:

‘Doctoral internships are organised through the Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities, who work with partner host organisations to give PhD students the chance to enhance their CVs by using their skills outside of academia for a fixed period of time. The programme is open to Arts and Humanities PhD students at any Scottish university.

After going through the application process, I’ve been fortunate enough to be chosen by the Scottish Parliament to work on an internship relating to this year’s Festival of Politics. The Festival, which will take place in October and of which this will be the fifteenth annual instalment, aims to stimulate and engage with public interest in politics, interpreted broadly; in recent years, it has included panel events, art exhibitions, film screenings, live music, and interventions from prominent keynote speakers including politicians, journalists, academics, and political commentators. My role will include researching panel topics and speakers, liaising with panellists and external partners, and general planning and administration of the event. Additionally, I’ll be carrying out research for various events associated with the Scottish Parliament’s twentieth anniversary celebrations. 

I’m really pleased to have been given this opportunity. Not only will the experience of working on a large-scale public engagement event be beneficial to my future career prospects, but I honestly believe that projects like this are hugely important in ensuring that people feel involved and included in national politics. As such, I’m keen to get involved and to help ensure that the Festival is as big a success as possible. I’ll be working part-time on the project, for three or four days a week over a period of several months, which will also mean that I won’t have to entirely put my research to one side during that time. This is a really exciting opportunity for me, and I can’t wait to get started!’

Thanks, of course, to Fraser for sending the post and all the best for the internship – we look forward to updates over the months ahead. And we should also add that Fraser will be giving a paper on ‘The ‘Ex-Musulman’ and the ‘Musulman Laic’ in Contemporary French Literature and Film at the IMLR’s conference on ‘Disaffiliation, Disidentification, Disavowal’ in April.

New Semester

It’s already the end of our first week of the new semester here at Stirling so time for a quick round-up of our news. It’s been a busy little run up to the start of teaching here: new colleagues, great First Year numbers and those starting in our Advanced stream have been benefiting from our Bridging Materials, French at Stirling has been rated No.3 in Scotland and in the top 20 in the UK by the 2019 Complete University Guide… A period of great change and excitement!

Where to start? ‘New colleagues’ seems a good place. Beatrice Ivey, Research Assistant on Fiona Barclay’s AHRC Leadership project, is now in Stirling and settling into Divisional life. She and Fiona are working on the organisation of the exhibition that forms part of the project, more on which soon. We’ve also welcomed Emeline Morin who has joined us as a Lecturer in French for the next two years. Emeline’s research interests lie in comparative literature and fairytales and she’s teaching with us across a wide range of courses.

Alongside Emeline, two other new lecturers will be joining us over the months ahead. Aedín ní Loingsigh will be starting in October, with Hannah Grayson taking up her post in January. Hannah’s recent work has been on the Rwandan Stories of Change project at St Andrews. Much as we were sad to see Bill Marshall retire, it’s great to get a chance to welcome a fantastic group of new colleagues and we’re looking forward to working with them. We’ve also got some new faces among the Teaching Assistants who work as part of our Language team (with Language Coordinator, Jean-Michel DesJacques, Mathilde Mazau and Brigitte Depret): Fanny Lacôte and Fraser McQueen who have taught with us before are joined by Aurélie Noël who has previously taught at the University of Glasgow.

As ever, the start of the new semester also means welcoming back our students. Our finalists are back from their Semester Abroad (in France, Quebec, Morocco, Switzerland… or Hispanophone destinations for those doing French and Spanish) and our Year 3 students are about to start the process to select their destination for their Semester Abroad. With that in mind, Jean-Michel DesJacques, Jose Ferreira-Cayuela and Cristina Johnston are organising their annual get-together at the end of September that gives all those students a chance to meet over wine and nibbles to talk about Study Abroad and to exchange questions and tips. All the University’s incoming exchange students from French or Spanish-speaking partner institutions are also invited and it’s a great chance for the different groups of students to get to know each other.

Some of those incoming French-language exchange students are also currently being recruited to lead informal conversation sessions for students in a range of year groups, to offer a further opportunity for spoken language practice beyond the weekly tuition offered by our Language team.

And, of course, we have a great cohort of Year 2 students, many of whom will be applying for English Language Assistantships over the course of this year (welcome back to those who were ELAs last year!). For the first half of our second year, we run an Intermediate class for those who started as complete beginners with us in Year 1 and it’s great to see that numbers on that module are even higher than last year.

Finalists back from Semester Abroad, Year 3 students planning time abroad, students settling into Year 2 and good numbers of Year 1 students which is fantastic to see. Those on the Advanced stream – taking French with a wide range of other subjects – have been working their way through the Bridging Materials that we put together for incoming students each year, to help smooth the transition from secondary school language study to University-level language learning. And those on our Beginners’ stream are about to plunge into the intensive programme of language learning that will introduce them to French and build their confidence and ability as the weeks progress.

A great group of undergraduates and an enthusiastic intake of students on the French stream of our Translation and Translation with TESOL programmes who will work under the guidance of French at Stirling staff on their translation portfolios and, ultimately, on their dissertation projects. It’s been particularly nice to see some familiar faces on those programmes with recent graduates returning to undertake postgrad work with us (as well as across other TPG programmes at Stirling, of course).

As in previous years, we’ll be posting profiles of our students regularly, partly to catch up with those who’ve written for us before and to get a sense of how their studies are progressing, and partly to introduce you to some of our new Year 1 intake, so keep an eye on these pages!

As for French at Stirling colleagues, lots of news to report there, too. Fiona Barclay, Beatrice Ivey and Cristina Johnston are in discussions with the MacRobert’s film programmer, Grahame Reid, to finalise a programme of French Film Festival screenings that will take place at the MacRobert later in the semester. Details to follow but expect some great new French-language films! (It’s not directly French-related but do also check out Grahame’s Central Scotland Documentary Festival at the MacRobert from 4-8 October – a fantastic programme of documentaries lies ahead!) And on another film-related note, David Murphy will be involved with the Africa in Motion festival in November – more on which soon…

 

 

 

 

Aedín ní Loingsigh will be participating in a workpshop on Interdisciplinarity at the Université de Limoges in December and Elizabeth Ezra gave a paper in June at the Contemporary Childhood Conference at the University of Strathclyde examining the witch-familiar relationships in Harry Potter and His Dark Materials. Elizabeth has also just signed a contract for a book, co-edited with Catherine Wheatley of KCL entitled Shoe Reels: The History and Philosophy of Footwear in Film, which will be published by EUP in 2020. And with her non-academic hat on, Elizabeth will be talking about her children’s book Ruby McCracken at the Wigtown Book Festival later this month.

This weekend, while staff and students from French and Spanish are talking to prospective students at Stirling University’s Open Day (15 September – come and see us!), Jean-Michel DesJacques is off to Dundee where he’ll be taking part in the 25th Anniversary Conference UCML Scotland​: Looking inward and outward. Jean-Michel will be meeting actors from all education sectors from Primary to higher education. The 1+2 language initiative will be high on the agenda but not exclusively since challenges and issues in languages are multiple and complex.

And our Phd student Fraser McQueen has been presenting his work across a range of conferences since the Spring, including the ASMCF Postgraduate Study Day at the IMLR (where he spoke about Islamophobia and anti-Semitism in France), the Society for French Studies Postgraduate Study day at UCL (with a paper on female radicalisation fiction), Stirling’s own annual Arts and Humanities Postgraduate Research Conference and the Society for Francophone Postcolonial Studies Postgraduate Study Day at Birmingham. Fraser also co-organised the SGSAH Second Year PG Symposium in Glasgow in June and presented his own work there, too.

There is much, much more that we could include here but that seems a good taste of what’s going on to start things off this semester. More to follow over the weeks ahead! In the meantime, many thanks to the students whose photos from last semester abroad have made their way into this post and bon weekend!