After French at Stirling: 50 years on…

It is definitely a sign of how busy things have been at Stirling since the start of the year that it’s already the end of March and this is our first blog post of 2024 but it’s a great one to get us started again!

We’re always happy to highlight the progress of our graduates but in this blog post we are delighted to share reflections that go back further than usual. Russ Walker is celebrating fifty years since his graduation from Stirling, and reflecting on what a degree in French led to…

“I graduated from the University of Stirling in the summer of 1974 – hard to believe that it will be fifty years this summer. A degree in French – what to do with it?

I had a chance to work as an ‘intelligence agent’ (spy? they never said) and an opportunity of a post on Réunion Island in the Indian Ocean. Instead, I spent my working life based in Scotland in jobs where French was not a requirement. However, it proved surprisingly useful in many of my postings and in my other interests.

The first half of my working career was involved with General Register Office for Scotland which organised and ran the recording of all births, deaths and marriages in Scotland along with the population census. To my surprise, in my first month I found myself back in Paris at the Palais du Luxembourg translating for registration colleagues at the annual meeting of the CIEC – the International Commission on Civil Status.

In the following years we returned as observers at annual conferences in Madrid, Salzburg and Cesme (Turkey), even being invited to present a paper in French on the new Scottish Marriage Law.  I worked on the team that took the new law through Parliament.

As a graduate civil service recruit, I undertook a number of lengthy training courses in London. One of these involved a week studying at ENA Paris (Ecole Nationale d’Adminstration) where we twinned with the future top administrators of France. Emmanuel Macron was a later graduate but went on to close it down.

I was part of the team planning and preparing the 1981 population census and then took charge of overseeing the census in the Edinburgh and Lothians area. This involved around 2,000 temporary workers at a time when the census involved house to house visits.

For most of the 1980s I was a travelling inspector checking and visiting registrars across western Scotland covering the area from the Isle of Lewis down to Gretna. Scotland was covered by three of us with the grand title of “District Examiner” – one of the best jobs it was possible to have! I married and moved back to the Glasgow area. I was free to plan my own timetable and spent many pleasant summer weeks on Lewis, Harris, Barra, the Uists, Skye, Islay and the smaller islands – saving Glasgow and the larger offices for winter visits! It was a great way to learn about my native land and what was happening locally.

My travelling life stopped in 1992 and the second part of my career was a complete change. I started working for the Scottish Government initially on government assistance grants to companies creating new jobs. There were many interesting and ambitious local companies looking for assistance to expand including some of the computer games companies which were just beginning to emerge at that time.

I followed that with a lengthy secondment to Scottish Enterprise, our business development agency, working firstly in the Locate in Scotland (LIS) briefing team. LIS was charged with bringing in and supporting investment from outside the country and we were kept busy briefing government ministers announcing new investment and job creation in some of the new, emerging industries. There were usually lots of TV and newspaper coverage at these events.  Later I took on the German desk (!), supported by my very capable colleague Heike, a formidable Glaswegian German. I followed that with the renewable energy remit, a sector which was just emerging at that point. At that time too I participated in some EU-based courses in Brussels, conducted in French (of course).

The final part of my career was a return to the Scottish Government in various parts of its International relations interests. We ran an international network called ‘Friends of Scotland’ and developed web based material to promote Scotland internationally, with the aim of growing our trade, investment, influence and networks.

One memorable project involved a close connection to my time at Stirling. I had spent the second semester of my third year studies in Montpellier. One of our ‘Friends’ offered the opportunity to leave a permanent reminder there – the partial restoration of Sir Patrick Geddes garden in Montpellier and the installation of a copy of Geddes bust at the College des Écossais – now one of the main centres for courses for teachers in the Hérault. When I was there in 1973 I had no idea then about the college nor any knowledge of Sir Patrick Geddes!

Geddes has since reappeared as one of the great environmentalists and his phrase – Think Global Act Local – is used around the world so it was nostalgic to return to Montpellier for the unveiling of the bust and the project itself was well covered by an article in The Scotsman.

In my personal life I was able to use my French quite regularly for many years. My department was very supportive of assisting further learning so I took a number of courses at the French Institute in Edinburgh including its Diploma in Commercial French as well as enjoying some French Government sponsored courses in France (a week visiting Champagne producers around Reims, for example!)

I was quite involved in athletics for many years and as part of its European City of Culture in 1990, Glasgow hosted the European Indoor Championships. I helped to recruit most of the interpreter/liaison volunteers to work with the overseas teams and I acted in that capacity for the French team. An Italian/Ugandan friend from my Stirling days came up do the same with the Italian team.

Another interest is in philately – stamps, postal history, postcards etc – and that has called on my French from time to time. I attended the Salon Philatélique d’Automne for a few years helping some dealer friends sell material to French collectors. We also established very friendly links to the New Caledonia stamp club (Caledonia being the initial link!) and I gave a presentation to its members in the Maison de la Nouvelle Calédonie near the Paris Opera. I am now investigating whether my fairly large collection of French North Africa might be of interest to the university. Over the centenary years of the First World War my philatelic society worked with the French Institute and Goethe Institute in Glasgow to put on a number of displays there showing material from the war.

And Brel? Well we did organise a memorial dinner for more than 20 at Bar Brel in Glasgow to mark the 25^th anniversary of his death. Of course with ‘frites et moules’.

Il nous fallut bien du talent
Pour être vieux sans être adultes

Finally, another memory from Stirling in the summer of 1974. Monty Python came to film nearby at Doune. The University invited 175 students to take part in a Python battle scene in its May 20 1974 newsletter. The advert stated: “While pay for the day is rather humble at £2 a head, transport to and from the film set is free, as is the food, including elevenses, hot lunch and tea. An added attraction, of course, will be a bunch of crazy antics coupled with the fact that the film is a full feature length film – going out on international release. Transport, in the form of buses, will be leaving from the back of Pathfoot at 8am (on May 25) – yes, that early, so that the makeup and costume girls can do a good job on you. Who knows, this could be your chance for stardom!”

I volunteered along with our two French Assistantes – we have dined out on that story ever since!”

So many of our graduates have gone on to such a diverse range of careers, further studies and adventures after they’ve completed their studies at Stirling but this has to be one of the most diverse posts we’ve been able to add so many, many thanks to Russ for taking the time to send this through and we look forward to tales of further French-related adventures.

  

End of teaching already

It seems like the European Day of Languages was only yesterday and yet here we are, with our undergraduate teaching just having finished and our students and staff involved in oral assessments and final pieces of coursework. Many of our Year 3 students are getting themselves ready for a semester on Study Abroad in the spring and, for everyone else, it’ll be back to Stirling where we’ve got new modules launching and lots of exciting outreach work being undertaken by our Language Ambassadors.

There’s plenty to update you on and we’ll hopefully get a few blog posts up over the coming days. However, one thing we’ve been particularly pleased about this semester is that we’ve seen the return of former students who have decided to come back to Stirling, in one guise or another, and whose experiences give a great sense of the range of routes that studying a language opens up.

To start off the updates, we were really glad to hear from Erin, who graduated in June with a BA Hons in French and, in September, started our MSc programme in International Conflict and Cooperation, building on the dissertation she wrote on Islamophobia in contemporary French society: “In the beginning it was quite daunting and just a lot of work, almost everyone else came from a politics background and I was having a bit of an identity crisis thinking ‘well, I can speak another language’. After a couple of weeks, I relaxed into being an International Relations student and managed to impress one of my tutors by being able to speak French in order to analyse a speech by President Macron (that we happened to have studied in our French classes…). Despite the mountain of readings I am buried under now, I am enjoying myself.

As part of this Masters I have signed up to go on a study trip to Geneva in May 2024, the aim of which is to secure work opportunities and connections in UN organisations in Switzerland. I have already volunteered to act as translator for the class because I’m the only francophone in our class. Hopefully, it will provide an opportunity to practice my French – I have been reassured by Brigitte that the Swiss sometimes speak slower, which is a relief since I haven’t been able to practice all that much since graduation.

While it is sometimes strange to be back at Stirling in a new department, and not see the faces I became used to, it is nice to catch up every once in a while with the members of the French department in the corridors of Cottrell building which I am convinced is a maze. This is my fifth year here and I still get lost!”

We’re delighted to see Erin back on campus and grateful that she made the time to send us through this update. We’ll look forward to hearing how the Geneva trip goes in the spring, too. More news about other Stirling returnees, and other assorted updates, to follow…

2023 Finalists and their plans

This week our fabulous finalists become our fabulous graduates and, as well as congratulating them all on their achievements over the past few years, we also wanted to give you a sense of the range of plans they have for the months and years ahead. So, in no particular order, and with others to be added into the mix over the coming days …

Lauren, who’ll be graduating with a BA Hons in French with Spanish and Professional Education is about  to start her probation year teaching French and Spanish in secondary schools. She’s due to find out where she’ll be teaching in the next couple of weeks and, after 5 years at university (and being the student for 20+ years!), is excited to start! And Ewan, who is graduating with a BA Hons in French and Spanish, and who spent time in Quebec during his studies (merci pour les photos!), plans to take a year out of education, and then to go to Montreal next year to study a masters in translation from English to French. He is looking into deferring the offer he has received until next year in order to be able to work and save some money before he goes over there.

Emma, who has just completed her BA Hons in International Management with European Languages and Society has just found out that she has been accepted on the British Council English Language Assistantship scheme for a placement in Spain. When she comes back, she’s thinking of going on to do a postgrad course in secondary teaching for languages. And Nela, who’ll also be graduating with a BA Hons in International Management with European Languages and Society is off to undertake a 7-month residential programme at the Isha Yoga Centre in India. She’ll be doing daily sadhana and volunteering in exchange, hopefully translating some of the Sadhguru’s teachings into French. As for Eden, who is graduating with a BA Hons in French, she’ll be working as a waitress at Taymouth Marina Resort for the next year to save up money for some Marine qualifications and then plans to work as a deckhand on superyachts in the Mediterranean, hopefully based in France.

Jannie has just finished her BA Hons in Psychology and a European Language with us is planning to head to Strathclyde Uni on the master’s for organizational and work psychology. Before then, this summer, she will be travelling, visiting her friends across Europe, and working back home in Denmark. And Beth, who will be graduating with a BA Hons in French and Spanish, has been accepted for the MA Translation and Cultures at Warwick for the coming academic year. Beth is waiting to see if she has been successful in getting a scholarship and, if she has, then she’ll be Warwick-bound! Until then, she’ll be working in an inn on Mull to earn money before moving down south.

Many, many thanks to all our soon-to-be graduates for having got back to us with all this information about their plans. We wish you all the very best for the future and have thoroughly enjoyed teaching you all throughout your degree! Enjoy your graduation ceremony and do keep in touch. And, if you happen to be reading this as a finalist and haven’t had a chance to get back to us yet, please do drop us an email and we’ll very gladly add your plans into the mix. Mainly, though, félicitations à toutes et à tous!!

Catching up with last year’s graduates

One of the great things about this blog is that it gives us a means of keeping up, not only with what colleagues in French at Stirling are doing, but also with what our students and our graduates are up to. As we get closer and closer to this year’s graduations, we thought it’d be good to catch-up with some of our graduates from last year so, with no further ado…

Shannon studied for a BA Hons in French and Spanish at Stirling and as a 2022 graduate moved on to pursuing her PGDE in primary education: “I am now working full time in a nursery setting in Liverpool as the curriculum practitioner. And my languages have not been completely forgotten. My pre-schoolers enjoy having a Spanish lesson once a week and we may add French to their curriculum soon! Wishing this year’s graduates all the best in the future no matter how you do or what you do!” Sophie also graduated with a BA Hons in French and Spanish and, since graduating, has started another degree studying Theology and Christian Leadership: !I’ve loved using the skills I learnt at Stirling to help this degree and next year I have chosen to study New Testament Greek which makes me excited to be able to use my language skills again.”

Meanwhile David, who graduated with a BA Hons in French and History, spent time in the US after he graduated but has since returned to do an MSc in Heritage at Stirling, and is currently researching and writing his thesis: “You will also be happy to know I have been able to make use of my French skills I acquired at Stirling, in my capacity as a volunteer at the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders Museum. As a guide, not only can I assist French tourists, but behind the scenes I have also been able to translate material into French to help the Museums accreditation and be more welcoming to foreign tourists.” Our other David, who joined us as a mature student, and graduated with a BA Hons in French, explains that “after 7 years of re-education which concluded with four unbelievable years of involvement with French at the University of Stirling, I promised my wife and my three grandchildren that I would devote more time to them which I have done but that has not stopped me for continuing to learn and practice French.” In the year since graduation, David has kept on reading French books (including re-reading some he’d studied with us!), revising French grammar, listening to podcasts and regular news bulletins and trying to speak as much as he can through websites such as Language Exchange: “My appetite for learning has not waivered or reduced in any way. I have always had the will and motivation to continue although, I do miss being a student on campus and the camaraderie of my peers and being able to have the skills of our tutors to hand for advice when required.”

Lara, who completed her BA Hons in French and Spanish last June, has just finished working for a year as an English Language Assistant in a secondary school in Madrid with the British Council: “It’s been a very enriching experience and I plan on returning for a second year.” Ceinwen, having graduated with a BA Hons in French last year, has stayed on at Stirling for postgraduate studies on our MRes Humanities programme carrying on the research she did during her undergraduate degree and “When I’m not doing that I’m making full use of the Institut Français’ cinema programme in Edinburgh.”

Valentina, who graduated with a BA Hons in International Management with European Languages and Society, she has spent the past year working for Global Voices, our local translation and interpreting company, as a credit controller: “I call and email every day in French as I look after the debt for the French and Swiss market, as well as the Italian one. So, naturally my languages skills have improved, I now feel comfortable to speak on the phone to a native speaker which is great! I’ve also learnt all about chorus pro which is the public administration invoicing system in France!” And Muirne, who completed her BA Hons in Business Studies and French last year, has been doing an International Business Master’s here at Stirling this past year and is starting work on her dissertation now: “I’ve really been enjoying this programme and it has opened up lots of different routes I can take to start my career journey. I was also one of the programme reps for the course as I wanted to have a bit more responsibility and show more leadership. I have still been keeping up with my French as I think that will be a useful tool in the future for me. I have also been able to keep in touch with a French pen pal I made in 3rd year which has been helpful for practicing French.”

Sofia, who graduated with a BA Hons in French and Spanish last year, has almost finished her MA in South Asian Area Studies and is currently working on my dissertation, which is focusing on the legacies of trauma stemming from Partition and how this has affected the diasporic descendants of the Partition. Sofia was also recently accepted into a summer programme for Our Shared Cultural Heritage which is a programme that experiments with ways for museums and heritage organisations to work better for young people. Their focus is on the South Asian diaspora in the UK and young people in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh: “I’m not quite sure yet what the programme will entail but it will be interesting to look at heritage, culture, and of course language and to look at the Scottish South Asian community.” Vasiliki, having graduated with a BA Hons in Business Studies and French, moved to Madrid after graduation to do a Master’s in International Trade and Business: “Classes are finishing at the end of July, then I have to submit my thesis by mid-September, so in the meantime I am looking for an internship in the field of marketing or HR mostly, and I am really just looking across Europe, as I don’t want to limit myself. I would also be very much interested in moving back to the UK.”

And Morgan, who graduated with a BA Hons in International Politics and Languages, is currently in Belfast where she has just started writing her Master’s thesis exploring who is responsible for the deaths of displaced persons who drown while attempting to cross the Channel: “While I no longer directly study French, my knowledge of the language and the country have been particularly helpful when conducting research for my thesis. I work part-time as a hotel receptionist where I regularly get to talk with guests from French-speaking countries who always love to be able to chat in their native language.” Brendan, graduated with his BA Hons in French and Spanish last summer, and applied for a Masters in TESOL (Teaching English to Students of Other Languages) here at Stirling Uni and started that at the end of September. He hopes to complete that, including his final teaching portfolio/dissertation project by the end of August at the latest: “Afterwards, in September and October, my programme may offer an external placement in various countries, one of them being France, where I would be asked to observe and do some English teaching in a language school. However, it is not clear if that will materialise yet so right now I’m just taking each day at a time and focusing on what I have to do at present. If everything goes according to plan, I will officially graduate in November. My reasoning for doing this Masters was to prepare me to be able to teach English and get employment more easily when living in France and Spain in the future. If I’m to be completely honest with you all, this has been the most challenging year in my academic journey so far (even more so than third year of undergrad when everything was online due to covid, which says a lot!). However, I’m hopeful that it will bear some fruit in the not-too-distant future in my pursuit to become a languages teacher, which is my dream job.”

Pauline, who graduated with a BA Hons in International Politics and Languages, is just finishing up her Master’s degree in Applied European Governance and Policymaking: “I will have written and oral exams throughout June. I am doing last revisions for my master thesis on the economic impact of integration of migrants in Germany and I expect to graduate at the beginning of July. I am also applying for traineeships and jobs, mainly in Brussels, for EU policy positions, with hopes to not be unemployed in August. We shall see how that goes. I’ve also been involved with a new volunteer network (Generation Climate Europe) and have moved up to now being the Network and Outreach Lead, which I am quite excited about.”

And finally (for the moment… if you’re a 2022 French at Stirling graduate reading this and you haven’t been back in touch yet, there’s still time!) Fiammetta, who graduated in Modern Languages and Business Studies says that her life has completely changed since graduation in June 2022: “After graduating, I was unsure which path to follow for my career. I wasn’t happy with my life and I almost decided to go back to my home country. I started a job in Edinburgh as a customer service assistant in a travel agency. The team was great, however after only 3 months I realised that it wasn’t the job for me so I decided to apply for a job I thought I would never get.

In February I applied for Emirates cabin crew and a few days later I received an email asking me to go to one of the company’s assessment days. Being cabin crew for Emirates has always been on my mind but I always thought it would be really hard for me to get that job. The day after the interview I received the “golden call” and after less than a month I moved to Dubai. I have now been living in Dubai for more than 3 months. It was hard to leave my friends again (I had left my family and friends in my home country 6 years earlier) but it was one of the best decisions I ever made. Now I get to travel and visit so many countries and I get paid for it! I am in contact with so many cultures and during my flights I can use my language skills to interact with customers. The best advice I can give to the graduates of 2023 is to always pursue your dreams, even if it’s not easy or if you have to leave everything behind, it will always be worth it. Now I’m having the best time of my life!”

It’s always lovely to hear from our graduates and to learn where life has taken them after their time as undergraduates at Stirling. Thank you very, very much to all of our 2022 graduates who have been back in touch and who have contributed to this blog post (and to Joanna whose earlier post started off this particular catch-up) and do keep in touch and keep us posted on what you go on to do next. Bon été to you all!

When ‘Who Killed My Father’ came to Glasgow

Teaching may be over for this academic year in French at Stirling but there’s still plenty going on, including, very recently, a trip to the theatre for some of our students with our colleagues Mathilde Mazau and Hannah Grayson. As Mathilde explains: “I read all of Édouard Louis last summer and I was excited when I found out that Who Killed My Father, the play version of Qui a tué mon père, was showing in Glasgow. It is Louis’s third book and a furious criticism of how the political elite vote laws that will literally cause people and workers to die younger. It is also a declaration of love to his ill father and a touching account of their troubled relationship.

Hannah and I met our students Jemima, Christie, Tom, and Jegan at the Platform theatre in Easterhouse. I had read Qui a tué mon père again that day, in preparation for the play, and to refresh my memory. We chatted about the book before getting into the theatre. The play is a dramatised, almost word-for-word rendition of Qui a tué mon père. The mise-en-scène is pared down to just a few objects, bits of furniture and photos of prominent French political figures of the last couple of decades. I was moved by the one-man performance of Michael Marcus who really succeeded in conveying both the urgency of Louis’s message, and the underlying tenderness in the text. Who Killed My Father as a play is as powerful as the book itself.”

As for the students who attended, over to Tom, who is just finishing his first year with us: “When we studied Édouard Louis’s excellent Qui a tué mon père (Who Killed My Father) in our first semester of first-year French at Stirling this year, I don’t think any of us expected to be watching an English-language version of a play based on the book a few months later; but that’s exactly what happened. 

Presented by the theatre company Surrogate, and performed in Platform, an arts centre in Easterhouse in Glasgow’s East End, the play was a very literal English translation of the book’s original French. It was a solo performance, using a monologue style to effectively reflect the use of first-person narrative in the book, with the sparse staging adding further to the feeling of intimacy this approach established with the audience. Simple lighting techniques and props heightened this further.

What those of us who were lucky enough to be there enjoyed, was an excellent adaptation of the book. Michael Marcus, performing as Louis on stage, conveyed the full range of emotions portrayed within the book, from anger to pathos, all underpinned by the themes of injustice that are so central to Louis’s story. The book ends with a damning inditement of French politics, and its impact on the life of Louis’s father, and the production did a fantastic job of conveying this, using nothing more complex than photographs of politicians as props to effectively support Michael Marcus’s powerful delivery.

While it was, at times, slightly surreal seeing a book that we’d studied in French class being performed in Glasgow, it was a fantastic production.  If you get the chance, I’d really recommend you go and see this.  If it then tempts you to read the book, even better.

I’d like to give a huge ‘merci beaucoup’ to Hannah Grayson of the university’s French department for organising and arranging the trip, and to the university for covering the cost of the tickets.”

Many thanks to Mathilde, Tom and Hannah for putting together this blog post (and to Hannah and Mathilde for organising the trip!) and we look forward to more tales of our students’ adventures in French at (and beyond!) Stirling over the coming weeks.

‘Languages really can take you anywhere!’

Continuing with this week’s accidental blog theme, it’s great to be able to post this update from one of our recent graduates, Nicole, who offers another example of the surprising directions you can go in after a degree involving languages:

‘I can’t believe it’s been 3 years since my last graduation ceremony at the University of Stirling. After graduating with a BA (Hons) in French and Spanish I decided to return to do a Masters in Translation Studies with TESOL.

After graduating, I decided to take a few months to relax whilst still working in my retail job. However, as those few months ended, COVID was just beginning. As a new graduate, I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do next, and it seemed like a daunting few months ahead whilst I looked for a job. I’d always imagined I’d return to Spain or France again to work as a language assistant for another year after graduating, but given the travel restrictions at the time I decided it wasn’t for me. Unfortunately, I was gong to be working in retail for a bit longer than I’d hoped.

I stayed in my retail job for around a year, until a job as a project manager at a translation company popped up. I decided to apply and I was lucky enough to be offered the job. I worked there for around six months, in an incredibly fast-paced (and sometimes very stressful) environment. I certainly learned a lot about how the industry really works and how it compared to what I’d learned during my Masters degree.

After six months, I applied for a job closer to home which is where I am still working today. I work for an online company specialising in plants and garden supplies, and which sells in several different countries in Europe. I am responsible for managing anything which needs translated to be sold in EU countries, as well as doing some general content writing for the website.

Of course, the horticulture industry is definitely not where I expected to be working, but I think it’s proof that languages really can take you anywhere! I’m grateful to have a job that I enjoy and where I still get to use and incorporate languages every day. And I hope it’s an uplifting reminder for anyone recently graduated, or anyone in their final year who may be unsure about the future, there’s a job out there but it may be where you least expect it.’

Many thanks to Nicole for this fantastic post (and for your patience while you waited for us to actually get it up on the blog!) and thank you for the very kind words of encouragement to future Languages graduates.

Languages in the workplace: communication and financial services

There seems to be a bit of a theme emerging over this week’s blog posts, something along the lines of the surprising destinations that French at Stirling can lead to. Today’s catch-up with recent graduate, Joanna, who completed her BA Hons in French and Spanish last year, is very much in keeping with the theme…

‘I’m currently writing this from my lunch break- Since graduating and getting married last summer, I have been working in Financial Services, more particularly in the bond market, for TP ICAP here in Belfast. They are a company with a global presence, from Headquarters in London’s Bishopsgate, to New York, to Singapore and more recently they have developed a large presence in France and Spain with offices in Paris and Madrid that are rapidly expanding. Broadly speaking, my role is an analytical one and concentrates around the Settlement of trades and ensuring they are matched in the market in time for settlement date.

I work with banks right across the world and so as you can imagine my languages are very useful! Knowing French has been a hugely significant for me in my job. We work closely with SocGen, Crédit Agricole, La Banque Postale, BNP Paribas, HSBC France. So often, their employees don’t speak a lot of English and so having the ability to make a phone call to these clients in French is so useful and they really appreciate you being able to speak to them in their own language, something that really helps us with promoting and encouraging good customer relations, which is something trading really relies on! 

I remember one of the first tasks one of my colleagues asked of me was to call a French client to settle an ongoing issue they were having for weeks that wasn’t resolved because the client couldn’t speak English and none of my colleagues spoke French! I was able to sort it out in a phone call and it really reinforced to me just how important it is to know languages in the workplace. 

I really enjoy my job and love how I can continue to use and practise French while working in an environment that allows me to learn and develop new skills in a completely new area of work! There is no doubt that having a languages degree really opened up that opportunity for me and I’m really grateful for all the help I got at Stirling along the way.’

Many thanks to Joanna for this great update, for the pictures (of our lovely campus and from time spent in Southern France) and belated félicitations from French at Stirling! And for any language students reading this whose teachers or tutors keep telling them how many doors languages open… we’re really not making it up!

Language, history, memory: research and poetry in Pakistan

As Scott’s blog post yesterday showed very clearly, there’s a lot more than ‘just’ French to what we’re up to in French at Stirling so we thought we’d follow-up today with another update that takes us to what might initially seem a rather surprising location, courtesy of our colleague, Nina Parish:

‘I spent the month of February in Lahore, Pakistan, on a research trip with the DisTerrMem project. This project is to do with the management of competing memories over conflicted borders and disputed territories and the military ceremony which takes place every day at the Wagah border (between Pakistan and India) is certainly a case in point and a clear example of antagonistic memory. I spent much of the month grappling with the complex memory work going on around the British colonial past and the traumatic events of Partition in 1947 as represented (or not) in museum exhibitions in Lahore and Islamabad. I also had the pleasure of meeting the director of the Ajoka theatre company, Shahid Nadeem, and watching this company perform and rehearse their work. This research aligns with the work I do in Memory Studies and Museum Studies and may seem a long way from France and the French-speaking world, but questions around language, representation and power resonate everywhere, as can be seen in this interview with the extraordinary poet and translator, Naveed Alam. Meeting and spending time with him in Lahore was one of the highlights of this trip for me.

Can you introduce yourself?

I am Naveed Alam. I live in Lahore, Pakistan. The city has been home for the past 12 years. I was born and raised in Pakistan and left for the US to start my college studies. I returned after spending more than two decades in the US. Considering that I reversed the common trend of east to west migration, I am often asked what brought me back. Frankly, I don’t have a clear or precise answer. There’s certainly a bond with the native soil and language, especially if you are the sole family member living abroad; however, I have always cherished the idea of being rootless or transplantable. I must say my apprenticeship with language(s) has played a great role in determining my personal and professional trajectories. I was immersed in English language and literature (poetry) while in the US—writing, teaching, etc. Then I got here and for the first time (re)connected with Punjabi, a language I had never used for academic or creative writing purposes. It started with translating a 16th century queer poet, Madho Lal Hussein, and led to trying out and appreciating the possibilities of cross-fertilization between the two languages. I published my first collection of bilingual poems in 2020.

Can you present the language situation in Pakistan?

The language situation here is very interesting and quite tragic. For starters, the hundred years of colonialism has a lot to do with it. We aspire to be fluent in English at the expense of our native languages. There are the minority sufferers of the superiority complex (those well versed in English who go to the private, elite educational institutions and often pursue their higher studies abroad) and there are the majority sufferers of the inferiority complex (the population without much access to quality education because of a broken public education system in a country where the powerful military has been setting up the self-serving policies since the independence from the British).

We met for the second time on International Mother Tongue Day. Can you tell me about the significance of this day in the Pakistani context?

Well, many people here gloss over the fact that Pakistan has a lot to do with International Mother Language Day. On February 21, 1952 Pakistani forces opened fire on the students of Dhaka University protesting against the imposition of Urdu, as opposed to the native Bengali, as the sole official language in what was then East Pakistan and is now Bangladesh. Four students were killed. In 1999 UNESCO recognized the day as the celebration of native languages and multilingualism.

What would you have to say about language and memory work in the Pakistani context? If language is the repository of a culture’s memory then what kind of amnesia are we likely to suffer if we lose our language?

If a language is not in good shape and the situation goes unaddressed then it’s likely to produce an unhealthy, often toxic, discourse that further disempowers the vulnerable populations likely to be affected by the biased versions of history, fabricated narratives serving the interests of the hegemonic classes; for example, the official narrative of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan in the shape of text books and public media spares no effort to erase or elide the non-Islamic past and sever its link to a pre-independence common South Asian cultural heritage. Reminds me of this line by the Yugoslav-American poet, Charles Simic: ‘The President spoke of war as of a magic love potion.’

They say if we don’t learn from history we are condemned to repeat it. In our Pakistani context with our poor, neglected indigenous languages how can we even access the torn and faded scripts of our history, reach the recesses of our memory, realize our creative and regenerative potential?’

Many, many thanks to Nina for this fantastic blog post and for allowing us to publish this extract from her interview with Naveed Alam. Keep an eye on the blog for more updates in the coming days…

And we’re back!

Le blog est de retour! It has been an incredibly busy couple of months for students and staff at Stirling and we are already a few weeks on from the end of our teaching semester so, firstly, well done to all our students for all the hard work over this spring. There’s lots of news for us to share and, although the teaching is over for this academic year, life remains busy for us all but we hope you’ll bear with us as we catch up with overdue blog posts and bring you up to speed with everything that’s been happening and lots of what lies ahead in French at Stirling (and beyond!).

To get the ball rolling once again, it’s fantastic to be able to start with a post from our former student Scott who graduated with a BA Hons in French and Spanish. Scott’s post is particularly timely against the backdrop of the presidential elections that have taken place in Turkey this past week. Confused as to what the connections might be with French at Stirling? Read on…

‘Herkese merhaba! Nearly two years since leaving Stirling and, almost like a rite de passage for French Studies’ students, I was asked (quite a while-ago now) to write a blog piece about my destinations following graduation. I did my undergraduate at Stirling in French and Spanish from 2016 to 2021. Although I was studying French and Spanish, I was always interested in the Middle East and what the Middle East is/was; as the saying goes, Middle of what, East of where?

A country that I was always interested in was Turkey – a good example of the East/West question depending on who you ask. I had been there a few times on holiday and had heard about Orhan Pamuk, but I hadn’t really done much reading into the history of the country or the language and culture. It wasn’t until I was on my British Council year – which should have been used to improve my French rather than being on first-name basis with the bakers in the nearest boulangerie to my flat–, that I began to study Turkish language and culture. Before I knew it, I was dead-set on doing something Turkey-related after finishing my degree at Stirling; it was either further study or finding work in Turkey in some kind of capacity. Luckily for me, Turkish studies was offered as a two-year Master’s degree in the UK; the only issue being, moving from relatively cheap Stirling to incredibly expensive London was quite the shock. Lockdown helped for the first year, I was able to stay at home then I completed a three-month term at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul last summer. Then, I did the London thing; saw the sights, rode the subway, and paid an exorbitant price for oh-so-fashionable city coffee. I’m now back in Scotland getting ready to hand in my end-of-year essays, and preparing for my dissertation.

One of the many things I liked about the studies at Stirling was the breadth of literature we read. I particularly enjoyed Didier Daeninckx’s Cannibale, Hygiène de l’assassin by Amélie Nothomb and Guy de Maupassant’s Boule de suif – which I still return to now and again for how good it is. And, even though I did my French dissertation on film studies, I really enjoyed the close-reading of texts and the ways in which literature had so many different layers of meaning to what you initially read on the page – something you can see very clearly in Boule de suif. It was this interest in literature that I’ve been able to develop in my Master’s through the works of Ottoman writers from the mid-nineteenth-century who, similar to de Maupassant, wrote about the changing world and peoples’ relationships to one another, even though it’s written in a language that no one speaks or writes in anymore – unless you meet a diehard Ottomanist. And, if the stars align, I can take what I’ve been working on mixed with what I learned at Stirling and use it for a PhD programme – hopefully somewhere across the pond.

I initially thought that what I was involved in was far removed from all things French at Stirling but that’s just not the case. After picking up Ahmet Mithat Efendi’s Avrupa’da bir Cevelan (A Jaunt in Europe) and Recaizade Mahmut Ekrem’s Araba Sevdası (The Carriage Affair) – two authors I’m currently working on, who write pages upon pages of French written in the Ottoman-Arabic script  –, I’m back in the deep-end, flicking through French Grammar in Context trying to refresh my memory of French tenses and what subject and object clauses are – something that still plagues me in Turkish. Or if it’s not French grammar I’m reading up on, it’s French literary and cultural theory which, currently, is almost completely incomprehensible to me – but we march on.

Funnily enough, there is quite an interesting history of the use of French language and French culture in Turkish. Just under one-hundred years ago, then president, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, using similar policies to those of my favourite Académie, wanted to shake-up the Turkish language by removing many Arabic and Persian loanwords and instead create new Turkic words mixed with Western language. So, in Turkish, if I ever forget the word for suburb, truck, or screen I can just use banliyö, kamyon, and ekran respectively. And apparently, if you squint your eyes a little, the word for school (okul) in Turkish comes from the French école – but no one really knows.’

Many, many thanks to Scott, firstly for his patience as it has taken rather longer than we’d have hoped to get this post online, but primarily just for this excellent article that does so much to show the wide range of avenues that open up to our students after their degrees involving French at Stirling. We look forward to reading more about Scott’s progress over the years ahead and will keep our fingers firmly crossed for the PhD applications!

More news and updates to follow… À bientôt!

A Passion for Languages

Time for some more from our students and graduates! I’ll be posting another profile by one of our Year 1 students a little later but to start of this week’s blog updates, news from Natalie who graduated in 2019 and who continues to find ways to put her languages to excellent use in her career:

“It’s hard to believe that I graduated over three years ago, where has the time gone! Since graduating in International Management Studies with European Languages and Society, I have been lucky to use my language skills on a daily basis in the workplace. Although, I have to admit that I wasn’t always sure what career path to take. But one thing was sure, I wanted to find a job that allowed me to not only pursue my passion for languages but also develop my knowledge of international business.

Since graduating, I have worked in an e-commerce business. I currently work as a Marketing Manager where I have been lucky to use my Spanish on a daily basis to converse with Spanish colleagues. I have also used my French skills to write copy for the web and translate our products for online platforms including Amazon.

It’s great to keep up my language skills, but it’s also important to not forget all the transferable skills my degree has taught me. Studying abroad at EM Strasbourg Business School developed my cross-cultural awareness and knowledge of international business. I also developed my communication skills working as a Language Assistant for the British Council in Spain.

One of the reasons I chose to study this degree was due to its flexibility. I have acquired skills which are highly sought-after in the global job market. I would recommend this degree to anyone wishing to use their languages in an international context.”

Many, many thanks to Natalie for sending through this update and we wish you all the best for your career and for the years ahead – we look forward to checking in again in the future!