Emeritus Professor Marilyn Martin-Jones and Dr Elizabeth Chilton from the MOSAIC Group for Research on Multilingualism, School of Education were invited to speak at the 7th International Colloquium on Literacy and Written Culture, 31 July – 2 August 2019, held at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG) Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
Professor Martin-Jones and Dr Chilton, together with Dr Eleni Mariou, also from the MOSAIC Group for Research on Multilingualism, School of Education, are currently working on a British Council funded research project with colleagues from Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG) and Universidade de Brasilia (UnB) 'The changing language and literacy landscapes of Brazilian universities: English in policy development and in practice'. This project is investigating the specific ways in which university policy-making with regard to internationalisation is unfolding in two universities in Brazil, and the specific ways in which the use and production of texts in English, online and offline, is mediating this process, in different areas of academic life: research, teaching/learning (in different disciplines), and administration. Professor Martin-Jones made two visits to Brazil (to UFMG and UnB) as part of this project between March and early July 2019.
During an additional visit to Brazil, in August 2019, Professor Martin-Jones taught a course on ‘Language, globalisation, mobilities and inequalities’, at a Winter School, at UnB, The Winter School, involving 12 international scholars from the Europe, Latin America and the USA, was funded with a CAPES PrInt grant to the Postgraduate Programme in the Instituto de Letras (Departments of Linguistics and Literature). CAPES Print is a Brazilian government fund to support internationalisation in Brazilian universities.
Finally, as part of the Birmingham-Brazil Forum 2019/20, there are plans in place to invite Dr Ana Souza (UnB), one of the project collaborators in Brazil, to deliver a talk on, 'Migration, languages and identities: Brazilians in the UK'. The talk will be the first in the MOSAIC seminar series, organised by the MOSAIC Group for Research on Multilingualism, Department of Education and Social Justice, School of Education, College of Social Science.