Book Launch: Multilingualism, Identity and Interculturality in Education

You're kindly invited to our next virtual Plurilingual Lab Speaker Series event with the book launch of:

Multilingualism, Identity and Interculturality in Education

The panel presentation will begin with editor Dr. Ruth Fielding providing an overview of the book, which brings together perspectives from a range of different countries and contexts. The book explores the intersection of three key ideas in education: multilingualism, identity and intercultural understanding. All three terms can be defined in a wide array of ways and the conceptualization of how these ideas intersect also varies; yet in our increasingly connected and multilingual world, it is ever more important to understand the ways in which incorporation of multilingual identities in classrooms has an impact upon intercultural understanding. The overview of the book will be followed by presentations by two of the chapter contributors: Dr. Gary Bonar will discuss the evolving identities of three pre-service teachers in Australia as they traverse their teacher education. Then, Dr. Anuschka van ’t Hooft will explore the complexities of how Indigenous language speakers construct and negotiate identities while creating digital learning materials to promote Indigenous literacies in Mexico. Dr. Ruth Fielding will conclude the panel by gathering together the diverse voices represented in the book, highlighting how we see a very limited set of views represented within academic work on these topics. 

Dr. Ruth Fielding is a Senior Lecturer at Monash University and researches multilingualism, language education and identity. Ruth’s research and professional work centres around a program of research which explores bilingual/multilingual identity, language teacher education, pedagogy and assessment in language learning and teaching, and intercultural approaches in languages education. Ruth's research program seeks to transform teaching and learning through shifting approaches to languages. She works with teachers to understand how identity and intercultural understanding are interwoven in language education. Her research also seeks to understand how education in super-diverse cities takes place to further develop education for diversity and inclusion. Her research has appeared in the International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, Foreign Language Annals, Language Learning Journal,Language and Education, Babel and in a number of edited volumes. Ruth’s book Multilingualism in the Australian Suburbs is available as an e-book and as a hardback book from Springer. She has recently published a book on the intersection of multilingualism, identity and interculturality in education for Springer , and is co-editing a book on teacher education for content and language integration in bilingual settings for Multilingual Matters to be released in 2023.

Dr Gary Bonar is a Lecturer in the Master of TESOL, Languages and Humanities specialisation courses at the Faculty of Education, Monash University, Australia. Prior to commencing his lecturing position, he worked in the Victorian secondary education sector, most recently in the role of Curriculum Coordinator responsible for Literacy, Languages and Social Sciences. He has also taught two languages (Japanese and Italian) and English as an additional language in secondary schools. In addition, he also has over ten years’ experience teaching English in diverse sectors in Asia and Europe.

Dr. Anuschka van ’t Hooft is a professor of Social Anthropology at the Autonomous University of San Luis Potosí, Mexico. Her research is grounded in sociocultural and critical perspectives of language in society, and her main scholarly interests are related to the situation of the Indigenous languages in Mexico. Anuschka is committed to collaborative and participatory projects with the speakers to address the community’s language reclamation goals and agenda. This work includes research on oral traditions, community-based language documentation and revitalization, digital language activism, and the promotion of Indigenous literacies. Since 1993, she has done comparative research looking at Tének and Nahua oral traditions from the Huasteca area in Mexico. More recently she has turned towards language documentation and revitalization. This work includes online self-documentation and digital activism to make Indigenous languages visible on the internet, and is carried out by young Tének speakers, who produce, annotate and discuss materials (written texts, audios and videos) in their language. Anuschka is currently developing research with colleagues from other Mexican universities creating digital stories in several Mexican Indigenous languages to promote children’s engagement in literacy experiences in their mother tongue: https://witsi.net/

Research interests: Indigenous languages and cultures, community-based language documentation and revitalization, indigenous languages digital activism, indigenous literacies, oral traditions, and intercultural literature.