The University as a Multilingual and Multicultural Workplace:: Aspects of a sociolinguistic research agenda (with Bent Preisler)

Beskrivelse

The University as a Multilingual Workplace: aspects of a sociolinguistic research agenda

Bent Preisler and Anne Fabricius

Funded by the Danish Research Council for Culture and Communication, and Roskilde University, the research center for Cultural and Linguistic Practices in the International University (CALPIU) provides a framework for international cooperation for the purpose of creating a new theoretical understanding of the internationalization process which European universities are undergoing. It is generally assumed that internationalization in this context means the same as “use of English”. Within CALPIU, however, it is assumed that internationalization is about the relationship between many cultures and languages within the same place of work, and about the possibility of practicing diversity and hybridity as resources in education. This idea has a potential impact on the organization (which invariably has power relations within it), didactics, learning processes and the academic content of educational programs.
CALPIU was conceived with Denmark, particularly Roskilde University, as its focal ‘case’, but the Center now cooperates with researchers in many European countries and beyond (Britain, Spain, Hong Kong, Australia, etc.), who share our interest in the internationalized university and the practices defining it.
Our presentation will report results and ongoing research from diverse CALPIU projects currently being carried out. Relevant results will address such fundamental questions as, for instance, “Is international education only a question of formal standards determined in, for instance, Bologna? Or is international education also what the interactants decide it to be? – what resources they decide to operate with? – and how they make the ‘local’ and the ‘international’ interact in new constellations of educational hybridity?”.

Periode	23 nov. 2011
Sted for afholdelse	Ukendt ekstern organisation, Danmark