Events we have hosted or promoted in the past are listed below. If you are interested in current and future events, please click here.
Past events
Al-Andalus in Motion: Travelling Concepts and Cross-Cultural Contexts
Scientific Studies Association (ILEM) as a partner of the Language Acts and Worldmaking project is excited to announce the international conference Al-Andalus in Motion: Travelling Concepts and Cross-Cultural Contexts to be held on November 15-16, 2018, hosted by Istanbul Medeniyet University.
Worldmaking on Stage: Theatre Translation Research as Practice
As part of the 2018 Out of the Wings Festival, Out of the Wings is coming together with the Language Acts and Worldmaking project, and Goldsmiths, University of London to offer a one-day discussion forum aimed at practitioners of theatre and theatre translation and academic researchers working on theatre and translation studies.
Out of the Wings Festival
The Out of The Wings annual festival returns to London on 2nd-6th with a fantastic programme of rehearsed play readings, workshops and a one-day forum celebrating theatre in translation.
Languages Memory: Conference
In our first conference, Languages Memory, we want to enliven our awareness of the ways in which languages are experienced, practised, taught and researched. We will reflect upon the place of language learning and engage with the material and historical force of languages in the world. The programme is in development and will be available shortly and registration will be open in due course.
Languages Inheritance: Roundtable
This roundtable brings together international authors Mireille Gansel and Faïza Guène with literary translators Ros Schwartz and Sarah Ardizzone to discuss languages inheritance and languages memory, across the writing and translation process.
Migrant Shores: Poetry Reading
This evening of poetry readings includes a selection of works from the recently published anthology, Migrant Shores. This book defies negative assumptions about the possibilities of translating poetry, and the capacity of poetry in translation to create new international readerships.
Making New Worlds from Old: The Translation and Transference of Ancient Mythology into Contemporary Hispanic Theatre (and Beyond)
This afternoon and evening event addresses this practice in today’s Hispanic theatrical tradition, examining the manner in which writers from the Spanish-speaking world readapt tales from the Biblical and ancient worlds for their respective audiences.
Worldmaking Wordshop: A stitch in time...
The Diasporic Identities strand of our Language Acts and Worldmaking project is involved with Counterpoints Acts and the Open University in co-organising and co-curating a week-long event, Who are we?, as part of Tate Exchange at Tate Modern London.
A Workshop for Translators and Interpreters: Languages at Times of Crisis
A two-day workshop for translators and interpreters which will use drama techniques and artistic practice to enable participants to explore and reflect upon aspects of their experience of working with languages in society today.
A Professional Learning Partnership: Developing and enacting language teacher identities across borders
In this seminar, we will share our experience of exploring our identities as teachers, language professionals, and expatriates, who have crossed cultural, institutional and virtual borders.
Language Acts and Worldmaking Debates: Interculturality and Creativity in Language Education
Can language pedagogy adopt an approach to Intercultural Communication that privileges less functional agendas in favour of more creative ones?
London Centre for Languages and Cultures Easter School 2018
The LCLC Easter school aims to give students an insight into university-style language study. The main objective of the Easter school is to push students' knowledge of their curricular languages beyond what they are taught in the classroom.
Language Acts and Worldmaking Debates: Should Second Language Acquisition & Second Language Teaching be aligned & how?
This debate addresses one of the perennial issue surrounding Teacher Development in Primary, Secondary and Higher Education.
Online Skills for Modern Language Practitioners
This two-day workshop will provide an opportunity to try out online tools that can support the learning and teaching of languages in different contexts and how we can research this. This workshop will be aimed at MFL teachers.
The History of the Waiwai from the Arrival of the Missionaries to the Demarcation of Land
Rodrigo Waiwai, from the indigenous village Mapuera, in the northern part of the Brazilian Amazon, will give a talk on the history of the Waiwai taking as a departure point the first contact with the missionaries that settled in the area in the late 1940s.
The Waiwai and First Contact with the Missionaries
Rodrigo Waiwai, from the indigenous village Mapuera, in the northern part of the Brazilian Amazon, will give a talk on the history of the Waiwai taking as a departure point the first contact with the missionaries that settled in the area in the late 1940s.
Exploratory Practice for Continuing Professional Development
Exploratory Practice for Continuing Professional Development is part of the Language Acts and Worldmaking project under the Diasporic Identities research strand.
Between partitions and translations: Reviving Andalusian visions at the turn of the twentieth century Palestine
We will be welcoming Dr Yuval Evri (SOAS) to give a short talk about his current research on visions of Muslim/ Jewish cultural relations.
Language Acts and Worldmaking Debates: Modern Languages—A Discipline (still) in Search of an Identity?
The second Language Acts and Worldmaking debate will address three key issues: Are current definitions of language competence adequate for today’s multilingual populations and social encounters?
The Songs of Songs: Solomon, Rūmī, and St. John of the Cross
This is a poetic triptych with voices, songs and music based on: The Song of Songs attributed to King Solomon in the Bible (Old Testament), The Spiritual Canticles of St. John of the Cross (1542-1591) and The Odes on Mystical Love by the Persian poet Rūmī (1207-1273).
Faces of the Infinite
The conference is intended to generate the first comparative overview of the extent to which Neoplatonist philosophy has permeated poetic forms, styles, themes and figurative language as well as poetic theory in seven principal languages of the greater Mediterranean region, from late antiquity to the modern period.
100 Violets—A season of events to mark the centenary of Violeta Parra
This seminar aims to analyse Violeta Parra's work as a poet, musician and plastic artist, with contributions from specialists in various aspects of her work. Please note that these talks will be predominantly in Spanish
David Crystal Lecture 2017
We are delighted to welcome Dr Lid King to give the inaugural David Crystal Lecture, held in conjunction with the University of Westminster and the Language Acts and Worldmaking project.
The World Beyond Language: A Portuguese Approach
In this lecture, author Lídia Jorge will discuss how languages make us different and show our differences to others.
Worldmaking on Stage: Interactive Theatre Workshop
In this interactive theatre workshop, participants will explore the many ways in which we communicate across different languages, as well as within a shared language.
Languages in service around the world: BBC Panel
In this panel discussion, BBC broadcasters will discuss the complexities of language use in international broadcasting, and how different language services offered by the BBC World Service have influenced the languages in which they broadcast.
Language Acts and Worldmaking Debates: Language Education Activism
This theme debates whether current policies in Modern Language Education are fit for purpose.
Austria in Transit: Displacement and the Nation State
This workshop examines cultural responses to issues of transit and the place of the nation state in an era of mass international displacement.
Mapping Multilingualism and Digital Culture
This workshop aims to critically examine the current state of Modern Languages research which is somehow digitally mediated.
Mothertongue Workshop
The aim of this workshop is to uncover and to articulate the competencies and skills developed, studying for a degree in Modern Languages, which relate to the world, to work and to personal and professional relationships.
Sepharad: A Travelling Concept
We address such issues as: the meaning of ‘Sefarad’ as a ‘travelling concept’; early modern ideas of ‘the Hebrew nation’ or the ‘Hebrew Republic’ and their political uses; the textual and oral production of Sephardic cultural identity.
Global Iberias Workshop
Using as a case study the innovative first-year Global Iberias core course at King’s College London, we discuss how our research might reshape the teaching of Spanish and Portuguese from a global and transnational perspective.
Islam and Judaism in the cultural memory of Spain and Portugal
This one-day colloquium examines how Imperial Spain and Portugal engaged with the legacies of their multifaith medieval past.
Research seminar with Professor Julia Phillips Cohen (Vanderbilt), ‘Remembering Sepharad: History, Memory, Politics’
Professor Cohen will discuss her current research on the cultural legacy of Sepharad after the expulsions and forced conversions of the 1490s in Spain and Portugal. Her paper will be circulated in advance for discussion by those who register for the event.
Diasporic Identities and the Politics of Language Teaching
On 13 January the co-investigators of the Diasporic Identities research strand, Dr Inma Alvarez, Dr Lluisa Astruc and Dr Matilde Gallardo, organised a workshop at partner institution King’s College London