The Understanding Unbelief programme, led by Dr Lois Lee, Research Fellow in the Department of Religious Studies, has just announced the public engagement projects awarded funding through the programme.

Just some of the highlights include projects on ‘National Life Stories’ with the British Library, a three-episode podcast series ‘Meet the Unbelievers’ for History Hit, as well as an hour-long documentary ‘A History of Unbelief’ hosted by Dan Snow; a documentary film ‘Between Beliefs’ produced by Banyak Films, and resources for teachers ‘Understanding Unbelief in the RE Classroom’ produced RE Today Services.

For a complete list of the awards, including further details of the individual awards, please see the page here.

Amalia Arvaniti, Professor of Linguistics in the Department of English Language & Linguistics, will be giving a talk at the University of Leiden, entitled ‘Tackling Variability in Intonation Research and Analysis’, today 14 September 2018.

Intonation is essential for communication as it conveys information that helps listeners make inferences about the pragmatic intent of the speaker. Despite increased understanding of intonation’s importance, there is little agreement even about essential aspects of its structure and meaning. This is at least in part because research has eschewed the study of intonational variability, seeing it as a problem rather than a natural facet of speech production that needs to be understood and accounted for in studying and modelling intonation.

The talk will present a principled approach to the study of intonational variability (Tame Intonation, or TINT) together with results from a number of studies that put TINT to practice.

The workshop is entitled ‘Prosodic Variation Across Languages: The State of the Art in Comparative Prosodic Research’, and is funded by the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL), and the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).

For full details of the workshop, please see the LUCL webpage here.

The latest episode of the podcast series on ‘Nostalgia’, hosted by Dr Chris Deacy, Reader in Theology and Religious Studies in the Department of Religious Studies, has just been released.

In this week’s interview, Chris interviews Dr Reshmi Dutta-Flanders, Honorary Research Fellow for the Department of English Language & Linguistics. Reshmi grew up in Calcutta and came to the UK to study English at King’s College London in 1989. In this fascinating conversation, Reshmi compares her experiences of previously studying literature in India and how she was able to acquire various research skills.

Reshmi talks about the influence of her aspirational parents. Her father was a survivor of the Partition, and ended up doing an Engineering Degree in Wolverhampton. She also discusses her own experience of an arranged marriage, and we learn that her mother has just written a book, at the age of 80, in the field of Religious Studies.

Reshmi has often felt a need to prove something to herself, and has often felt a sense of dissatisfaction and never really felt a sense of belonging. She discusses how fear has often prompted her to push herself forward, and we talk about the degree to which education can be seen as an enjoyable pursuit and how it might be possible to enjoy what one is doing in the moment without worrying unduly about the future.

In the final part of the interview, Reshmi speaks candidly about her experience of teaching in Category B and C prisons where her students were often inveterate and institutionalized prisoners.

The podcast is available here:
https://audioboom.com/posts/6993486-reshmi-dutta-flanders

Learning and Organisational Development are pleased to announce an upcoming Presentation Skills training session, running on Friday 19th October, 9.30am-5.00pm, at the Canterbury campus.

For further information, and to book a place, please visit our L&OD events calendar.

Learning and Organisational Development are pleased to announce an upcoming Introduction to HE training session, running on Friday 5th October, 9.30am-12.30pm, at the Canterbury campus.

For further information, and to book a place, please visit our L&OD events calendar.