Research projects

The Department of Languages Cultures and Film leads pioneering research that transcends Modern Languages, influencing diverse disciplines globally. We champion challenge-based, linguistically-sensitive approaches, acting as translators between academic disciplines, societal realms, and theory and practice. Explore our transformative research projects below.

Transnational Memory Practices in the UK and South Korea

Dr Tamara West's project aims to explore the role of digital exhibitions in memory practices, contested histories, national identities, and postcolonial pasts.
Beyond Borders: Transnational Italy

Dr. Barbara Spadaro's project examines Italian culture inside and outside Italy, focusing on its mobility and transformation through various everyday practices and languages.
Romani Migration between Germany and Britain (1880s-1914): Spaces of Informal Business, Media Spectacle, and Racial Policing

Professor Eve Rosenhaft and Tamara West's (German Studies) project examines Romani groups who travelled from Germany to Britain in the decades before the First World War.
Brews and Brows: Shaping Stories from Eyebrows to Scousebrows

Dr Niamh Thornton's (Iberian and Latin American Studies and Film Studies) project gathers stories and explores what the eyebrow means to identity and selfhood.
Mediating Spanish Women: Popular Culture and Feminist Visibilities

Dr Abigail Loxham's (Film Studies) project interrogates the public understanding of gender in Spain.
Memory, Victims and Representation of the Colombian Conflict

Professor Claire Taylor's (Iberian and Latin American Studies) project interrogates the memory and representation of victims of the Colombian conflict, especially in museums, ‘official’ exhibitions, and memorials.
Monolingual Schools in Multilingual Societies: An Exploration of Language and Education in Cape Verde

Dr Nicola Bermingham's (Hispanic Studies) project explores the ways in which language underpins disparities in educational outcomes in Cape Verde.
Specular Ghosts: Memory and Trauma in Mexican Visual Culture

Dr Niamh Thornton's (Iberian and Latin American Studies and Film Studies) project assesses the cultural outputs emerging from the chaos and disorder of both past and present traumas.
Cultural heritage promoting quality of life in the at-risk megacity periphery of Kolkata

Dr Ian Magedera's (French Studies) project focuses on five former trading posts and garrison settlements up the Hugli River.
Translating Cultures: leading a national Arts & Humanities research theme

Professor Charles Forsdick (French Studies) worked with researchers in the UK and elsewhere to explore the sites, locations and zones within, across and between which translation occurs.
Writing the City: Berlin literature anthologies

Dr. Lyn Marven's (German Studies) project examines German-language anthologies. The project focuses on the development of the anthology form and its relationship to the literary history of Berlin, especially the much-analyzed ‘Berlin novel’.
Multilingual Heritage

Professor Robert Blackwood's (French Sociolinguistics) project focuses on how monolingualism is challenged in museums, monuments, and memorialisation.
Borderscapes - The linguistic de/construction of borders as an everyday practice

Professor Stefania Tufi (Italian Studies and Sociolinguistics) alongside PDRA Dr Jessica Hampton aim to generate new understandings of borders as everyday practices that we engage with.
Poetry Slams: Addressing Identity, Inequality and Multilingualism in Community Spaces in Mexico

This ongoing project, led by Professor Diana Cullell (Hispanic Studies), examines poetry slams in Mexico and how they reflect, express, and address societal challenges within the country. Discover the project's overview, including the aims and outputs.