LLAS Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies

(BRISMES) British Society for Middle Eastern Studies Annual Conference 2012
Event date: 26 March, 2012 - 28 March, 2012
Location: Middle East Centre, London School of Economics and Political Science

France, North Africa and the Middle East: interdisciplinary and multimedia approaches
Event date: 18 March, 2009
Location: School of Languages and Area Studies, Park Building, University of Portsmouth

Area Studies conference (24 March 2004)
Event date: 29 March, 2004 - 30 March, 2004
Location: Woburn House, 20 Tavistock Square, London WC1H 9HB

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

Islamic Studies provision in UK higher education

International approaches to Islamic Studies in higher education

Middle Eastern Studies in the United Kingdom

The study of the Middle East in UK universities dates back at least to the seventeenth century. The Middle East is taught and researched by scholars from a wide range of academic disciplines and student numbers studying Middle Eastern languages and area studies have substantially increased in the last few years.

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.

House of Lords debate Middle Eastern and Central Asian languages

Extracts from the House of Lords debate on what action the Government is taking to encourage British students in United Kingdom universities to study Middle Eastern and Central Asian languages (21 January 2004).

Threat to Area Studies at Durham
Durham University has recommended to its Senate and Executive Committee that the Department of East Asian Studies be abolished, with the last intake of students in October 2003.

Plenary: Languages in Higher Education Conference 2008: transitions and connections

To follow

Why the UK Needs Area Studies
This keynote speech was originally presented at the Area Studies Project conference: Understanding the world: Developing interdisciplinary area studies to meet the needs of the 21st century. The day began with an impassioned plea by former UK Ambassador to Iraq Sir Harold Walker that it is in the national interest that Area Studies programmes are maintained in the UK. In light of current events in Iraq and Afghanistan it is imperative that universities produce graduates who understand the languages and cultures of regions such as the Middle East.

Arabic: Learning to read Arabic - a beginners' guide

This instructional booklet is for students who wish to learn to write Arabic. It is designed for independent study using a step-by-step approach. Each manageable unit has plenty of references to other materials. Dr Randal Holme, University of Durham Language Centre, directed the project.

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.

Middle Eastern Studies research materials in Arabic and Persian
The aim of this project is to assist researchers to locate, in UK university libraries, works written in Arabic and Persian. At present tracing such material can be difficult, particularly as much of it is still only represented in local manual catalogues. Under this project, the participants will add records for around 60,000 Arabic and Persian items to local, national and international catalogues. The records will be created on RLIN, the bibliographic database of the U.S.-based Research Libraries Group, with the bibliographic description entered in both romanised (transliterated) script and in the original Arabic script. Not all libraries are currently able to make use of the Arabic script in their local system, but the aim is to 'future proof' the conversion work at a time of rapid change in the area of computer handling of non-Roman script. Records for over 38,000 Arabic and Persian items had been added to local catalogues. Two of the partner libraries, Durham and SOAS, have recently implemented the Innopac Arabic script module, and so are able to display records in the original script.

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.

Retrospective conversion of Asian and African collections 1978-1989
Based at the School for Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) project will facilitate the exploration of this research material by researchers and enable them to plan research visits to London more efficiently. It will facilitate the inter-library lending of material which is eligible for such use. It will reveal the wealth of resources that are held on closed access, such as microform and pamphlet literature. It will enable greater work on collaboration with other Libraries collecting in the same subject fields. Searchable through the SOAS web catalogue.