In this new seminar series, we highlight the work of the Centre's Resident Adjuncts, organised around GCSCR's four contemporary research themes. The focus is two-fold - to learn more about the exciting work of our Resident Adjuncts and to reflect on the opportunities and pathways available for postdoctoral researchers within Humanities and the Social Sciences.
Introducing Dr Reza Arab, Dr Benjamin Duester and Dr Kelly Shoecraft from the theme Language, Culture and Belonging
Dr Reza Arab's current research project investigates humour in online reviews for stigmatised territories, especially correctional centres in Australia. Prison reviews, for instance, are generally jocular remarks intended to be funny, mostly set within a specific ironic frame. Using digital corpus techniques, this study explores the socio-linguistic mechanisms of humour for speaking about stigma in general and stigmatised territories in particular.
Dr Ben Duester's research project investigates how a growing environmental awareness in DIY music scenes is practically addressed through sustainable engagements with material culture and waste. Informed by discourses in materiality studies and the emerging political ecology of music, his project will clarify how environmental effects of music production, distribution, and consumption are addressed in alternative production communities through circuits of material repurposing and upcycling. Chiefly, this project seeks to enrich the discourse of music's political ecology by investigating grassroots-based DIY scenes that function as spaces of experimentation, innovation and resistance against established throw-away consumption habits in petro-capitalist societies.
Dr Kelly Shoecraft's current research is situated in French bilingual school settings. In addition to working with teachers on innovative curriculum initiatives, this research explores children's use of multiple languages during whole class and group work activities (translanguaging) and the development of their bi/plurilingual identities. Interviews with teachers, classroom observations and informal conversations with children provide insight into how children make use of their entire linguistic repertoires to complete tasks and develop as plurilingual social actors. This pilot project is currently in progress, with plans to extend this work and research into other grades and a second school.
Presenters will speak to their current projects and reflect on their postgraduate research trajectories, joined by Language, Culture and Belonging Theme Leaders, Professor Cliff Goddard and Professor Andy Bennett, as Respondents.