Midlands Graduate School DTP student Jason Anderson (University of Warwick) reporting back after his ESRC-funded Overseas Institution Visit to Ambedkar University Delhi, India.

As part of his visit Jason delivered 2 talks for lecturers and students, and also led a half day seminar ‘Translanguaging in Indian Classrooms: Now and In Future’ on 30 January 2019 with a researcher from the University of Delhi. The seminar dealt with several crucial aspects of language teaching-and-learning such as the significance of translanguaging in Indian multilingual contexts in general and ELT classrooms in particular, teachers’ beliefs and opinions about using multilingual resources, teacher education for teaching English in multilingual contexts to mention a few.

Jason also led a workshop on ‘Teaching Grammar: Exploring Different Lesson Structures’ for teacher education students. The workshop focused on the structure of grammar lesson, connect between lesson structure and prevalent frameworks of language teaching, and a critical examination of frameworks.Participating students found it extremely useful in clarifying and consolidating their training. Both the talk and the seminar were well received, generating much lively discussion and interest in a topic of great importance to language teaching around the world today.

In addition to time spent within the University, Jason undertook further activities connected with the visit which have had a positive impact upon his PhD work:

“I visited the offices of British Council (BC) Delhi on 25 January, where I had a long meeting with the Head of Teacher Education. It was extremely productive, and she was very enthusiastic about my research, particularly the plan for the participants to contribute to a co-authored publication. She is keen for BC to support this work, and with this in mind, she is interested in helping to organise an opportunity for the participants in the project to come together towards the end of it to enable them to produce the publication that is planned.

I paid 3 visits to (National Council of Educational Research and Training) NCERT Delhi offices (on 25, 26 and 29 January), meeting with 3 different experts (2 researchers and 1 teacher education specialist) where I was able to discuss the project and get insights and input from these experts, who all were willing to allow me to audio record the interviews. One of them was instrumental in helping me get permission to carry out the pilot study that followed in early February in Telangana. He also introduced me to a number of important educators in the English language teaching community in Delhi on a Saturday afternoon social event. This led to an additional meeting with an experienced academic and coursebook writer in English language teaching, who gave me useful advice for data collection in challenging contexts when we met. So the visits to NCERT were extremely useful for my research.”

Midland Graduate School DTP student Julia Fernando from Aston Business School is currently overseas undertaking her PhD fieldwork in Uganda. Julia has created a blog to document her experiences and reflections while abroad – you can following her journey here: http://juliafernando.strikingly.com

Global Food Security has launched a new research communication competition for UKRI-funded PhD and postdocs called Speak Up for Food Security. To reflect the multifaceted nature of the global food security challenge GFS is keen to engage early career researchers from a range of different research backgrounds whose research is linked to, or has implications for, food security.

Finalists will be invited to a two-day research/science communications training course in London, all expenses paid. The winner will be invited to speak with GFS and Dr Adam Rutherford (BBC presenter) at Cheltenham Science Festival 2019.

The competition is open to all UKRI-funded PhDs and post-docs whose research feeds into the food security challenge (directly or indirectly).

The closing date is 24 February 2019 and more information can be found here: https://www.foodsecurity.ac.uk/activities/speakup/

The Midlands Graduate School is delighted to offer a number of Collaborative Studentships involving research or other activities with a variety of different external organisations for entry in October 2019.

Additionally, the MGS is also offering a number of Joint Studentships for entry in October 2019. Students will be fully registered and hosted at one of the Midlands Graduate School institutions, but will have a second supervisor at another MGS institution.

Please see here for details regarding the different Collaborative and Joint projects available and information on how to apply for them.