January 2013 e-bulletin - LLAS Centre for languages, linguistics and area studies
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News Bulletin |
Dear colleague,
Welcome to the LLAS e-bulletin for January 2013. Click here to see this email on the LLAS website.
Message from the Director 
The New Year has started amid the seasonal snow and ice with the chill spreading to higher education in England through falling student applications. The climate is chillier still for languages, which seem more affected by students’ economic anxieties than other subjects. There is irony in this since graduates from languages degrees have traditionally fared better in the job market than most of their peers (other than medicine and law). And recent surveys of employers have particularly emphasised the value of languages and experience of living abroad.
Languages may also be suffering from the resurgence of anti-European sentiment in parts of the political landscape. Just as language degrees boomed in the run up to the Single Market in the 1990s, they are now dipping in the isolationist mood of the 2010s. The ironies in this are that the economic prospects of the UK are intimately bound up with those of our closest neighbours and increasingly dependent on a globalising world where many of the new powers are not English-speaking.
LLAS has always had a mission to help build the capacity of the UK in languages. We are deeply committed to promoting a multilingual society, and we are increasingly supporting non-English speakers to develop their proficiency in English. Our work is designed to further these priorities in the UK and to deepen our engagement with European and international partners.
Readers will see from our current brochure that our priorities are translated into a programme of activities that include professional development, educational events, projects, research and evaluation. These are undertaken in collaboration with a wide range of partners in this country and abroad, and we look forward to extending and developing these partnerships in the year ahead.
Mike Kelly (follow Mike on Twitter at @ProfMikeKelly)
Director, LLAS Centre for languages, linguistics and area studies
This month's e-bulletin in brief
- In the news
- NEW Meet the LLAS team: Lisa Bernasek and Kate Borthwick
- NEW LLAS services
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LLAS events : Our events programme in full can be found at www.llas.ac.uk/events
IN FOCUS : E-learning symposium 2013, 24-25 January 2012, University of Southampton - Thursday and Friday this week!
In the news
LLAS E-learning symposium 2013 - Thursday and Friday this week!
The 8th annual e-learning symposium will take place on 24 and 25 January at the University of Southampton. Keynotes include Prof Mike Neary, Dean of Teaching and Learning at the University of Lincoln, Prof Allison Littlejohn, Chair of Learning Technology and Director of the Caledonian Academy, Glasgow Caledonian University, Prof Gráinne Connole, Professor of Learning Innovation, University of Leicester and Nik Peachey from Bell Educational Services. Find out more and register at http://www.llas.ac.uk/elearning2013. You can also download the e-symposium poster here.
LLAS/Routes into Languages 'Why study languages?' new 2013 calendar !! SALE NOW ON
This calendar was produced by LLAS Centre for languages, linguistics and area studies as part of the Routes into Languages programme. For only £2.50 you can order your printed copy at https://www.routesintolanguages.ac.uk/calendar . Alternatively, you can download all months for free at the beginning of each month at http://languagebox.ac.uk/3126
This year, languages featured include Italian, Arabic, Chinese, Tigrinya and more!
Our Languages in Your Hands
Anthropologist and linguist Mark Turin visits Nepal, South Africa and New York to explore the fate of the world's endangered languages in new BBC Radio 4 series called Our Languages in Your Hands. Find out more at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01p6zpl
Get our LanguageBox search widget for your website! 
We have developed an embeddable search box for the LanguageBox which you can add to your website. Get in contact with us and we can tell you how to put it on your website. See an example at: www.languagesatsouthampton.soton.ac.uk
Collaborative provision in Languages
Monday 11 February 2013 - British Academy, London
The Higher Education Academy and UCML are holding a one-day event, hosted by the British Academy, to reflect on examples of successful collaboration within and beyond languages, and to explore possible models to support both teaching and research for the benefit of students and academics in UK university language departments.
Attendance is free of charge but places are limited. For more information, go to : http://www.ucml.ac.uk/events/11-02-13.html
Meet the LLAS team
Lisa Bernasek
Lisa joined LLAS as a research fellow shortly after completing her PhD in Social Anthropology and Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University in 2007. She has loved learning languages since she lived in Germany with her family at the age of 12, and studied French and German in high school. She started learning Arabic as an undergraduate at Princeton University and has lived in Egypt and Morocco, where she worked for two years as a Peace Corps volunteer. Her PhD research was on North African art and material culture in France.
At LLAS Lisa has been involved in a variety of projects related to Arabic and Islamic Studies in higher education, and was the Academic Coordinator for the Islamic Studies Network from 2010-12. She is now contributing to initiatives in LLAS and Modern Languages at Southampton, including the recently established Institute for Language and Culture. She has taught Arabic, Social Anthropology, French Studies and Religious Studies, and is currently developing a module on the contemporary Arab world for Southampton’s Curriculum Innovation Programme.
Kate Borthwick 
After completing a degree in Russian, Kate headed off around the world to collect more languages to add to the mix of Russian plus school-girl French and German swirling in her head. She spent time teaching English in China and Japan acquiring pidgin Chinese and Japanese in the process. A short stop in California yielded some Spanish, and then it was back to the UK to start studying again. She picked up some Geordie while completing an MA in Media Technology for TESOL in Newcastle, and interestingly, some html coding too. She has been refining her RP while working in Southampton as an EAP tutor; e-tutor for distance online courses and in-sessional language support classes; online materials designer, and she has been involved with various research projects looking at issues around eLearning, and open practice in particular.
She now speaks fluent Open Educational Resources and is currently managing the HEA-funded iTunes and You project and the JISC-funded OpenLIVES project. Her role at LLAS involves managing the annual e-learning symposium which is held every January, at Southampton, and delivering training in the online authoring tool, LOC. She has recently managed a range of projects related to open educational practice, including the FAVOR, HumBox and Community Café projects (JISC-funded), and she is learning Chinese properly now. You can follow Kate on twitter at @KBorthwick
LLAS services 
LLAS is a research and enterprise group specialising in educational projects and professional development in the area of languages and related studies. We have been providing high quality professional development, resources and information to the higher education sector since 2000, first as part of the Higher Education Academy Subject Network and since 2011 as an independent group. We also engage in research and projects at the level of government policy and activities which promote greater public engagement with languages and related studies. The Centre’s activities extend to working across sectors and internationally. It is led by Professor Mike Kelly and a team of experienced education developers with academic and pedagogic expertise.
Our mission is to foster world-class education in our subject areas. We work in partnership with the primary, secondary and tertiary education sectors and provide the following services:
- Professional development
- Event management
- Project management
- Research and evaluation
Download our services brochure
Forthcoming events in the LLAS community
January 2013
IN FOCUS: E-learning Symposium 2013
24 - 25 January, 2013 - University of Southampton
This year the e-learning symposium is bigger than ever! 30 talks, 4 interactive workshops, students' posters, a publishers' exhibition and more!
Keynotes speakers include:
Prof Mike Neary, Dean of Teaching and Learning at the University of Lincoln
Prof Allison Littlejohn, Chair of Learning Technology, Glasgow Caledonian University
Prof Gráinne Conole, Professor of Learning Innovation, University of Leicester
Nik Peachey, Associate Trainer, Bell Educational Services
February 2013
ICT and Languages Conference 2013 (#ililc3)
9 - 10 February - University of Southampton
Collaborative provision in Languages
11 February 2013 - British Academy, London
March 2013
Teaching in higher education through the medium of English
18 - 22 March, 2013 - University of Southampton
April 2013
Residence Abroad, Social Networks and Second Language Learning
11 April - 12 April, 2013 - University of Southampton
June 2013
Teaching in higher education through the medium of English
10 - 14 June, 2013 - University of Southampton
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LLAS Centre for languages, linguistics and area studies
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