2013-14
Professor Larissa Aronin
The Trinity Long Room Hub was delighted to welcome Professor Larissa Aronin as a Visiting Research Fellow.
Professor Aronin is an Associate Professor at the Oranim Academic College of Education, Israel and is a Research Associate at the Centre for Language and Communication Studies, School of Linguistic, Speech and Communication Sciences, Trinity College Dublin.
During her fellowship at the Trinity Long Room Hub Professor Aronin focused on researching the spacetimes of multilingualism from the complexity research perspective. During this exploration she paid particular attention to the part of the environment which has not yet attracted much attention – material culture. The use of material culture as an additional, reliable and potent tool for sociolinguistic research on individual and group identities is seen as providing illuminating insights into minority language research, social work practices and yielding useful implications for the teaching and learning of languages..
As we strive for cohesion in super-diverse societies, urban, country and personal spaces, the knowledge of how to ‘read’ and understand the multilingual spacetime and individuals through their ‘material world’ would be useful. This will allow us to better understand historic and cultural divisions and behaviour of various groups and reify their narratives, both national and individual by applying the analysis of material culture. We will come closer to understanding how the self-image of a multilingual is supported, or changed by material culture in each spacetime, how trans-cultural identities are seen and maintained via materialities around them, how multilinguals negotiate and build their self image, feeling of belonging and identity through and with materialities.
The issues tackled in this interdisciplinary research have bearing on a number of primary research interests of Trinity College Dublin and the Trinity Long Room Hub. The research will examine the relationship between the languages, social circumstances (crisis) and transformation of identities, both on the level of the individual and the collective.
Professor Aronin has published in a range of international journals on a wide array of topics connected with multilingualism such as The international Journal of the Sociology of Language, The International Journal of Multilingualism, Language Teaching. She is the co-author of Multilingualism (John Benjamins, 2012), contributed to The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics Wiley-Blackwell (2013) and co-edited The exploration of multilingualism: Development of research on L3, multilingualism and multiple language acquisition (John Benjamins, 2009)and Current Multilingualism: The new Linguistic Dispensation (2013). She is an Advisory Board Member of Language Teaching (CUP) and an Editorial Board member of a number of journals: Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching (Adam Mickiewicz University, Kalisz, Poland), International Journal of Multilingualism (Routledge), Editorial Board Member annual journal "Theory and Practice of Second Language Acquisition" published by the Silesian University Press;Editorial Board member of the journal«Вестник Череповецкого государственного университета» Russia ; Scientific Committee member of Droit et Culture, revue internationale interdisciplinaire. She serves as a secretary of the International Association of Multilingualism.
Professor Aronin gave a public lecture entitled ‘Bilingualism and Multilingualism – The Same or Worlds Apart?’ on Monday 26 May 2014 at 6pm.
Spacetimes and Multilingualism
