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.

The MOSAIC Research Centre welcomes links with other scholars, nationally and internationally. Each year a small number of academics are guests of MOSAIC in the School of Education and the aim is to continue to develop networks and relationships through these and other research links. For those interested in visiting LDS at Birmingham download the Information for visiting scholars document [pdf].

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

Friday 3 July 2009

Language, Discourses and Society (LDS) Seminar Series

Negotiating Methodological Rich Points in Applied Linguistics Research: An Ethnographer’s View

Professor Nancy H Hornberger, University of Pennsylvania

“Methodological rich points” are those points that make salient the pressures and tensions between the practice of research and the changing scientific and social world in which researchers work – points where our assumptions about the way research works and the conceptual tools we have for doing research are inadequate to understand the worlds we are researching.  In this paper, I highlight some methodological rich points around issues of inference and generalizability, drawing on ethnographic applied linguistics research, and in particular on research carried out by Indigenous students for their Master’s theses at PROEIB Andes, the Program for Professional Development in Bilingual Intercultural Education for the Andean Region (PROEIB Andes) at the University of San Simón (UMSS) in Bolivia.  At the same time, I seek to reframe these issues in the context of more basic questions of research methodology and ethics.

Multilingual education policy and practice: Ten certainties (grounded in Indigenous experience)

1.30pm - 3.00pm, Room 524, School of Education, Edgbaston

Previous Events

Research Seminar

Multilingualism, discourse and ethnography

Date: April 8-10, 2008