26 February 2018 – CANCELLED

Speaker: Josep Maria Cots (University of Lleida)

Title: Researching and teaching intercultural learning: Some methodological issues

Venue and Time: room 3.58 (John Percival Building), 12.10

Abstract:

The divide between teaching and research in higher education has been a constant since the establishment of the German state-controlled Humboldtian university in the XIXth century, and it seems obvious that narrowing this divide may involve important changes in academic structures and practices. With this talk I aim to present work that I am carrying out on intercultural learning from the perspective of what could be considered as the two main activities of an academic: teaching and research. My main goal is to introduce some reflection on issues related to the methods that we employ in each of these activities and the extent to which they may be seen as complementary or incompatible.

The talk will be divided into three parts. In the first part, I will describe the methods employed and some of the findings obtained in a research project on the impact of study abroad on intercultural awareness. The second part of the contribution will be devoted to presenting a teaching experience involving an experiential approach to intercultural communication. The talk will conclude with a reflection on possible links between research and teaching in the area of intercultural learning and will pose what I consider to be particular challenges for reconciling the two.

Josep-Maria Cots is professor of English and applied linguistics in the Faculty of Arts of the University of Lleida, where he teaches courses in pragmatics, discourse analysis, intercultural communication, multilingual education, and English language. His research focuses on applied discourse analysis, foreign language teaching and learning, multilingualism, and intercultural competence. He adopts a qualitative approach (sociolinguistic ethnography and discourse analysis) to study the development of multilingual and intercultural competence in the context of specific language policies in secondary and tertiary education. He has published 8 books and numerous journal articles and book chapters. Josep Maria is co-director of a research team including 13 researchers and 5 trainee researchers and has been the lead researcher in several competitive funded research projects. Since 2002, his research has been awarded a total of 15 grants from different institutions. At the moment he supervises 5 PhD theses.