Much research nowadays requires researchers to be creative and reflexive when thinking about how to harness and handle their own multilingual (and monolingual) resources when they plan, conduct and write up their research. Research contexts of forced migration, inter-state conflict, and siege pose both affordances and challenges for researchers, irrespective of their disciplinary home. In this presentation, I draw on case studies to illustrate researchers’ multilingual (and monolingual) practices when they are researching how language operates in these multilingual contexts. I expand on earlier theory building of “researching multilingually”, which illustrates the relationship between researchers’ linguistic resources and the concept of purposefulness, and researcher spaces and relationships. In doing so, I foreground language and critical, reflexive approaches. My aim is to build “researching multilingually” theory for researcher praxis in the 21st century—a linguistic space of hybridity, liminality, and in-betweenness, where currently, there is little theoretical and methodological guidance.
Dr Prue Holmes is Associate Professor in the School of Education at Durham University, a Reader in International and Intercultural Education and MA Programme Director. Currently, she leads an AHRC-funded “Researching Multilingually” project on building research design and practice in multilingual contexts. Prue Holmes has published extensively on intercultural encounters; communication and learning experiences of international students; intercultural competence; immigrant communication experiences; intercultural education; and intercultural dialogue.
Contact : peter.voss@uni.lu | http://dtucalidie.uni.lu