2022 Residential

Between the 10^th and the 12^th of October ten PGRs from inside and outside the DTP came together for three days in Cardiff for the Language Cluster’s first annual residential retreat. This was a purposefully diverse group of researchers, from a wide variety of disciplines and institutions. From feminist film adaptations to metaphysics, fan subtitling in Asia to the history of the Cornish language and much more, what united the group was a passion for languages and an interest in how languages inform and enable our research.

After arriving in Cardiff, we gathered for an hour of icebreakers and opening discussion. With attendees from Italy, China, Peru, the United States, Cornwall and Devon, we had lively conversations discovering surprising overlaps and fascinating differences between our individual experiences of language in research and life. We closed out day one with some delicious pizzas at Calabrisella, a Cardiff student favourite!

Day two opened with a creative activity led by Language Cluster lead Katy Humberstone, whose interdisciplinary research focuses on the Cornish diaspora in Mexico. Katy led us through a ‘Lego Serious Play’ workshop, where we used Lego to brainstorm and spark discussion around the benefits of and challenges facing language education today. This activity finished with a big, collaborative Lego structure representing our dreams for the future of language learning in the UK. In the afternoon, we discussed plans for a possible Language Cluster conference in Spring 2023, exploring the possibilities for collaborations between the participants through a ‘researcher speed dating’ session. We closed out day two by preparing for our workshop with MFL Mentoring, discussing the barriers to uptake of modern foreign languages in schools and at universities.

Day three was dedicated to working with MFL Mentoring. Three members of the organisation opened by giving a fascinating presentation on the unique linguistic context in Welsh schools. We learned about how the English and Welsh languages are offered to young people in Wales through English, Welsh and bilingual medium education in primary and secondary schools across the nation. They discussed the pros and cons of making modern foreign languages mandatory at GCSE level and presented statistics showing the dire situation of MFL education in Wales, even compared to the rest of the UK.

MFL Mentoring then filmed brief interviews with each of the participants and asked us to contribute creative materials that they can go on to use in their interventions in schools. We brainstormed language-related anecdotes, wrote acrostic poems about the transferable skills between languages and seemingly unrelated jobs, and mapped our own individual ‘worlds’ of languages. We only wish we had more time to work with them, and hope that MFL Mentoring will collaborate with other DTP researchers or clusters in the future.