Dear Colleagues We're organising a workshop at King's College London next month to explore interactions between Modern Languages research and digital culture, as part of the 'Language Acts & Worldmaking' project, funded by the AHRC as part of the OWRI initiative. Registration is free, and we hope some of you can join us - please find further information below: ------------------------------- Mapping Multilingualism and Digital Culture (workshop) King's College London 22 June 2017, 10 am to 5.30 pm Modern Languages research increasingly happens in a context which is influenced by digital culture, and although this is often forgotten or ignored, global digital culture is profoundly multilingual. But what do we really understand about interactions (and tensions) between the two? How is Modern Languages research transformed by digital culture, and how can a multilingual perspective help us to engage with the 'Digital' more effectively? This workshop aims to critically examine the current state of Modern Languages research which is somehow digitally mediated - whether that be in its creation (editing), methods (virtual ethnography; social and cultural analytics; distant reading), transmission (as code), dissemination (digital publishing; visualisation), object of study (as 'data'), infrastructure (digital archives; ecosystems), mobility/mutability or its social dimension (crowdsourcing; social media). It explores how the study of other cultures, their languages, literature, art and history are altered as a result, and what this means for researching (and learning) Modern Languages. The workshop will bring together a range of academics, digital practitioners and cultural sector respondents in order to study the challenges and opportunities in merging digital and non-digital methods into an approach which integrates critical thinking, humanities-based interpretative skills, creativity and digitally mediated knowledge production. The workshop sets out to explore the following questions: * How does digital culture alter the way that Modern Languages research is carried out? * How have research questions relating to Modern Languages been articulated (and answered) using digital technology? * How have scholars and practitioners studying 'the digital' approached and interpreted Modern Languages research? What tools and methodologies have they employed, and what opportunities are there for broader application? * To what extent have networked communication, open culture, collective intelligence and participatory architectures influenced the execution and transmission of Modern Languages research and what are the opportunities/barriers? * What new research methods or research objects are created as a result? And what implications does this have for teaching/learning? The workshop will start with a keynote speech from Professor Claire Taylor (University of Liverpool), and includes panel discussions, group activities and presentations on a number of topics from digital researchers & practitioners with an interest in Modern Languages. This is the first in a series of events organised by the 'Digital Mediations' strand on the Language Acts project http://languageacts.org/ and funded by the AHRC as part of its OWRI initiative. The strand surveys digital data, tools and methodologies commonly used in Modern Languages research (with a particular, but not exclusive, focus on Spanish and Portuguese-language research) and explores the potential and limitations of digital culture in a language-based research ecosystem. There will also be opportunities to engage (digitally) with the questions raised by the workshop before, during, and after the event: we will be opening up debate online and asking people to nominate their favourite digital tools, projects and publications involving Modern Languages research. Some of the contributions to the workshop will be published online afterwards. Attendance is free, but places at this event at King's College London are limited so please register at: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/mapping-multilingualism-and-digital-culture-t... For more information please see the workshop web page at: https://languageacts.org/events/mapping-multilingualism-and-digital-culture/ You can follow us on Twitter at @languageacts and the #languageacts hashtag Paul Spence and Renata Brandão -- Best wishes Paul Spence Senior Lecturer Department Education Lead / Programme Convenor MA in Digital Humanities Department of Digital Humanities King's College London 26-29 Drury Lane London WC2B 5RL paul.spence@kcl.ac.uk<mailto:paul.spence@kcl.ac.uk> http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/ddh/research/index.aspx http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/ddh/study/pgt/madh/index.aspx Twitter: @dhpaulspence (English)/@hdpaulspence (castellano)