Department of Modern Languages and Cultures at Bangor University
About
Research in the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures at Bangor University seeks to foster understandings of culture, identity and language in regional, national and transnational contexts. The Department has expertise in literature, travel writing, translation, film, performance, visual cultures, popular culture, socio-political change and the exchange between cultures. Researchers work within the context of their language-specific disciplines but there is also considerable cross-disciplinary expertise in the fields of minority languages and cultures, travel studies, ecocriticism, popular culture, cultural transfer, and translation and socio-political change. Within these broad areas, academics investigate important questions around topics including postcolonial legacies; the politics of memory; power and critical discourse; national identities; migration and exile; mobility and immobility; material cultures and material texts; and the exchange of ideas across cultures.
Environmental Humanities research in the Department focuses on eco-social violence in the Francophone and Hispanophone worlds, notably the Francoist agricultural colonies of in-land Galicia and the privatization of the Galician communal lands (Professor Helena Miguelez-Carballeira); French prison islands off France’s Atlantic and Mediterranean coastlines (Dr Jonathan Lewis); and environmental injustice in contemporary France from the intersectional perspectives of multispecies, decolonial, feminist and disabled ecologies (Dr Armelle Blin-Rolland). Moreover, research in the Department explores the place of Modern Languages in the Environmental Humanities and the role that the discipline has to play in times of ecological crises.
Projects
Funded as part of Dr Armelle Blin-Rolland’s British Academy/Leverhulme Trust Small Grant (SRG22\220097), EcoModLang is an international and collaborative project that aims to foster a reflection on the place of Modern Languages in the Environmental Humanities and in collective action towards sustainability and justice.
Also funded as part of Dr Armelle Blin-Rolland’s British Academy/Leverhulme Trust Small Grant (SRG22\220097), ‘Récits des vivants / More-than-human Narratives’ is a series of five online seminars (February-July 2023) in which artists and activists discussed how their work engages with environmental and animal questions.
Partnerships
Dr Armelle Blin-Rolland and Dr Jonathan Lewis have partnered with the North Wales regional school improvement service GwE for the project A Greener Modern Language Curriculum for Wales / Cwricwlwm Ieithoedd Modern Gwyrddach i Gymru, which is funded by Bangor University’s Innovation and Impact Award scheme.
Contact
Dr Armelle Blin-Rolland (a.blin-rolland@bangor.ac.uk)