Priority Area Leadership Fellowship in Modern Languages

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The leadership dimension of the Fellowship will develop and champion the research agenda in Modern Languages in the UK. I will work with the AHRC and the Modern Languages community to maximise opportunities for Modern Languages research; and I will champion the value of this research beyond the Academy, notably in government. In particular, I will work with the four multi-million pound Open World projects in order to facilitate collaboration in areas of synergy across the projects and to maximise their influence more broadly. I will liaise regularly with the Modern Languages Subject Associations, the heads of Schools of Modern Languages, the Institute of Modern Languages Research, the British Academy and UCML in the promotion of the UK's research strengths in this area and in harnessing emerging strengths. By the end of the Fellowship, I would wish to see Modern Languages research in the UK as vibrant, visible, sustainable, well-supported in terms of funding opportunities and with a clear sense of direction for the future. The research project associated with the Fellowship will be in the area of language policy in the three devolved administrations. With the research assistant(s) on the project, I will explore language policy in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland on foreign language learning, indigenous languages and heritage languages, seeking to map the current situation, promote dialogue across the three countries, discuss problematic issues and crucially, establish successful strategies for growth in language learning. We will build in discussion of comparators in the area of minoritised languages, notably the Republic of Ireland and France. On the basis of the research findings, we will contribute to UK-wide discussion of language policy, joining up our thinking on the devolved administrations with research led by Prof Wendy Ayres-Bennett (Cambridge: OWRI MEITS project) on policy in England. We will double-badge three language policy workshops with the OWRI MEITS project, hosting one policy workshop in a devolved region of the UK and taking the lead role in organising a major workshop in Westminster at the end of the Fellowship which will push for a UK-wide Languages Strategy at government level.