LLAS Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies

Building the language base for research: the impact and future of Language-Based Area Studies
Event date: 14 December, 2012
Location: Brunei Gallery Lecture Theatre SOAS, London

Teaching on less commonly taught Area Studies
Event date: 14 March, 2003
Location: CiLT

Call for papers - special issue of Language Learning Journal

Papers are invited for a forthcoming special issue of the Language Learning Journal, the official journal of the Association for Language Learning (ALL), on Languages of the Wider World: Valuing Diversity.

Centres for Excellence in language-based Area Studies

Funding targets greater understanding of China, Japan, Eastern Europe and Arabic-speaking world.

The Languages of the Wider World CETL
The Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL), Languages of the Wider World (LWW) is hosted jointly by the School for African and Oriental Studies (SOAS) and University College London (UCL). Funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), it was set up in 2005 and is one of only two CETLs in the UK devoted to language learning and teaching and learning.

Central and East European Studies in the UK
A review of the development in the subject area since the Second World War. Central and Eastern Europe is viewed as covering a geographic space from Poland to the Western Border of Russia, and from North to South towards the Balkans. While dedicated degree programmes are relatively few, modularisation has ensured that many Central and East European course units exist in UK universities.

Russian studies in UK universities
An account of offerings and trends in Russian Studies in the UK at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels, including a brief history of the field, details of selected modules within key programmes, and of the main centres for study of Russia and the former Soviet Union

Michael Peto photographic collection
Michael Peto came to Britain from Hungary in 1939. He was a freelance journalist with the Observer newspaper, and travelled extensively, covering the work of the Save the Children Fund around the world. Other aspects of his work involved the arts, especially the London ballet scene. Major topics covered by the collection (which consists of some 130,000 items) thus include Eastern Europe, Israel, India, ballet and theatre and Scotland, as well as leading political, literary and entertainment figures.

DOMIC: Documentaries on modern international conflict
DOMIC is a two-year project launched to improve cross disciplinary access to television documentary archives held in the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, King's College London. The project supported by Research Support Libraries Programme (RSLP) began in January 2000. The archival collections to be covered relate to the Vietnam, Falklands and Gulf Wars, the Cold War, the Arab-Israeli Wars, conflict in the former Yugoslavia, chemical and biological testing and the development of nuclear technology and its impact on international relations and defence policies. Summary guides and detailed catalogues covering some 92,000 items are available on line.

H.G. Alexander Minorities Archive
Horace G. Alexander was lecturer in International Politics at Woodbrook (a training college in Birmingham). The H.G. Alexander Minorities Archive consists of material he collected on the problem of the German minorities in Poland after 1919, where the intermingling of Polish and German communities made the partition of Upper Silesia difficult. The archive includes the typescript of a lecture by Alexander; books and pamphlets by German and Polish authors on the German-Polish partition and on Polish claims to the town of Danzig; publications of the International Federation of League of Nations Societies.

Soviet secondary school textbook collection
One of the largest and most important collections of secondary school textbooks outside the former Soviet Union. A wide range of subjects for different age groups are covered. There are ‘spetskursy’ (intensive courses) as well as ordinary courses. Teaching materials used in many of the former republics of the Soviet Union are included, some in Ukrainian.

Joel Martin Halpern Balkan Archive
Dr Joel M. Halpern, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Massachusetts, has researched and published widely on the cultural anthropology of the Balkan region. He is perhaps best known for his studies of the effects of modernisation on family and everyday life in the Serbian village Oraŝac, based on material collected by Dr Halpern and his wife Barbara Kerewsky Halpern, during field work in 1953-4 and subsequent visits. The Joel Martin Halpern Balkan Archive consists of photocopies of their field notes. This is supplemented by the many photographs Dr Halpern took of Yugoslavia during his research, made available to the Library in digitised form on CDs. Besides documenting the diverse scenery of the region, the photographs vividly illustrate the lives and customs of the people, their agriculture, homes and festivals.

Russian and East European Studies
Glasgow University library has one of the most extensive collections in Europe of Russian and East European economics, politics and history. From a modest departmental collection in 1948 it has grown to its present size of about 75,000 items. The collection is particularly strong on the Russian and Soviet economy, especially of the post-war period, but other aspects of the former USSR are well represented. There is, for example, a good series of publications on the history and the economic history of the republics and regions, and a significant number of publications on the history of individual industrial enterprises. There are rapidly expanding sections on foreign policy, politics and law, and considerable holdings of material on pre-Soviet and early Soviet history. The holdings include published collections of historical, statistical, legal, diplomatic and Party documents, dissident materials, archives such as the Schlesinger Papers, special collections (e.g. on Trotsky) and microfilm collections of newly available Russian archives.

Klugmann Collection
The majority of the items relate to trials (often what are sometimes termed "show trials"), related matters such as espionage and treason, and other political events in Eastern Europe (such as the uprising in Hungary in 1956), though not exclusively in that area, during both pre- and post-World War II times.

Gallacher Memorial library
Based on the library of William Gallacher, last Communist Party M.P. in U.K. The library has grown by further donations since his death in 1965. It contains an extensive, wide-ranging collection of material on almost all aspects of the Soviet Union and CPSU including: the Russian revolution; World War II; politics; literature and art.

Changing Identities: Eastern Europeans in Bradford since 1945
The collection consists of recordings and/or transcripts of interviews on their personal histories carried out with members of the Ukrainian community in Bradford.

Left Pamphlet Collection
The Left Pamphlet Collection consists of printed pamphlets relating to left-wing politics mainly in the 20th century of which a number are from the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

Zavertal Collection
Material emanating from three members of the Czechoslovakian Zavertal family - brothers Joseph (1819-1893) and Wenceslas (1821-1899) and Ladislao(1849-1942), son of Wenceslas. Compositions by Ladislao include several operas and cantatas, about 20 part-songs and some 50 songs, over 60 items for orchestra or military band, over 60 pieces of chamber and instrumental music, and a number of arrangements of works by other composers. About 60 of the works held include a set of parts. The holding of music by Wenceslas Zavertal comprises songs and part-songs, a number of pieces for orchestra or military band (mostly with parts), and about a dozen chamber and instrumental pieces. There is one piece of piano music by Joseph Zavertal.

The Area Studies Network