Berlin Lives: Multilingual Metropolis Patrick Stevenson We know a great deal about multilingualism – but not as much as we might think. It’s certainly true, for example, that great efforts have been devoted to identifying and counting the world’s languages: global language research organisations tell us that over 700 languages are spoken by indigenous peoples […]

Professor Marion Demossier was recently invited to contribute to a workshop in Paris, Fondation Jean Jaurés on “The threatening ‘Other’? On the collective imagination surrounding the Roma in France”. The workshop was organised by Counterpoint, a research consultancy based in London as part of the Bridges Project in collaboration with the Open Society European Policy […]

Wars of Memory by Claire Eldridge In July 1962, French empire in Algeria came to an end following one of the most violent and iconic wars of decolonisation. That summer, while Algerians celebrated their independence, almost one million inhabitants of the former colony felt compelled to leave their homeland and make their way across the […]

Visit the ILC website to read two new research stories by our researchers: The art of Ana Clavel by Jane Lavery and The ‘international university’ and English Medium Instruction by Jennifer Jenkins    

Mapping knowledge in culture and science Research story by Mary Orr Mapping – cartographical, cultural, linguistic, scientific – has been central to development of European networks of knowledge and exchanges with other cultures, but saw a period of particularly important development in the early nineteenth century. Bitter military rivalries such as the Napoleonic Wars are […]

Until the early 18th century, Mexico and Peru had the highest number of African and African descent people in the Americas. Today, the coastal belt of Mexico’s southern Pacific Coast  – the “Costa Chica” or “the small coast” — contains many historically black communities. Residents descend in part from slaves and free persons Spaniards brought […]

Discarded in the hedgerow on a minor road in western Brittany, France was a signpost to Goulitquer; three metres away by the road, upright and mounted on a shiny new pole, emblazoned with a tiny coat of arms a sign to Goulitkêr. ‘Goulitquer’, ‘Goulitkêr’ are the same place of course, but the change of ‘q’ […]

Language is an issue in almost every aspect of conflict: in training and preparation for action, in intelligence work, in talking to people on the ground and in different military units communicating with each other. I studied the UN and NATO actions in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 1990s, when Yugoslavia was breaking up in a messy […]