The Centre has been created to provide a forum for the development of new, interdisciplinary lines of enquiry related to bilingualism/multilingualism, multilingual literacy, bilingual education, second language learning and contemporary discourses about linguistic and cultural diversity. Members of the Research Centre have been at the forefront of the development of these fields of research in the UK and internationally, through their empirical work and through their contributions to theory-building, and they have been particularly successful in attracting funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). They have also been active in promoting research on multilingualism, on second language learning, on language disability in bilingualism and on discourses about diversity in the wider research and professional community. Centre members are engaged in research which draws on different, inter-related strands of critical, social linguistics and on social theory, including linguistic ethnography, critical discourse analysis, new literacy studies and multimodal social semiotics.

Current members of the Centre

• Adrian Blackledge
• Angela Creese
• Gill Cressey
• Sheena Gardner
• Muhammad Khan
• Deirdre Martin
• Marilyn Martin-Jones (Director 2007 – 2009)

Current ESRC-funded research projects

Angela Creese (Principal investigator) and Adrian Blackledge, University of Birmingham, with Vally Lytra, Kings College, London, Peter Martin, University of East London and Li Wei, Birkbeck College, University of London (2006-2007) Investigating multilingualism in complementary schools in four communities.

Sheena Gardner, with H. Nesi, Coventry University, P. Thompson, Reading University and P. Wickens, Oxford-Brookes University (2004-2007) An investigation of genres of assessed writing in British Higher Education.

Marilyn Martin-Jones (Principal investigator) and Buddug Griffith, University of Birmingham, with Roz Ivanič, Lancaster University and Daniel Chandler, University of Wales Aberystwyth ( 2005-2007) Bilingual literacies for learning in Further Education. (Funded under the ESRC’s Teaching and Learning Research Programme).

Forthcoming Events

Research Seminar

Multilingualism, discourse and ethnography

Date: April 8-10, 2008