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Launching the Multilingual literature: celebrating multilingualism and multiculturalism series, this event will feature a keynote address that explores topics such as the importance of multilingualism, reading multilingually and in other languages, and bilingual editions of literature.

About the speakers

Keynote speaker:

Dr Ana Maria Sousa Aguiar de Medeiros

Dr Ana Aguiar de Medeiros is Director of the Modern Language Centre at King’s College London and Vice-Chair of the UK Association of University Language Communities (AULC). Ana also co-leads the research strand ‘Language Transitions’ with Debra Kelly as a member of the Centre for Language Acts and Worldmaking at King’s College. Throughout her academic career she has studied the lifewriting of women writers. She has published in English, French and Portuguese on Francophone and Lusophone literary and cultural studies, focusing primarily on questions of identity in the work of a number of authors including Marguerite Yourcenar, Assia Djebar Amélie Nothomb and Marie Nimier. Her first monograph focused on the lifewritings of Marguerite Yourcenar: Les Visages de L’autre: alibis, masques et identité (Peter Lang, 1996) and her latest volume is a co-edited collection with David Gascoigne on the works of Marie Nimier: Le Sujet et ses écritures: The Self in the Web of Language (Peter Lang, 2021). She is also a consultant on the European-funded research project: ‘Memoirs: Children of Empire and European Postmemories (2017–2021)’ and a member of the scientific board of the Language Learning in Higher Education Journal.

Panellists:

Yara Rodrigues Fowler

Yara Rodrigues Fowler is a writer from South London. Her first novel, Stubborn Archivist, was longlisted for the Desmond Eliot and Dylan Thomas Prizes and shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year 2019. Her second novel, there are more things will be published in April 2022. As a work in progress, there are more things received the Society of Authors’ John C Lawrence Award and was shortlisted for the Eccles Centre and Hay Festival Writers’ Award.

Sitara Khan

Sitara is an educationalist, an author and a poet, whose writings range from conference papers to fiction. A number has been published in Britain and internationally.

Specialising in English and History, she began her career as a teacher and has held a number of management positions in Education within the Local Government sector. Throughout her career, she has contributed to the debate on the role of language in education. She was responsible for introducing bilingualism as one of the essential criteria for teachers in the Language Service of the Authority. She has continued to campaign for equality and justice.

Sitara has been a visiting speaker at Fudan and Shanghai universities in China, as well as at Leeds (UK). She was selected to represent Leeds, her home city, in its twin, Dortmund, at its European City of Culture Literature Festival in 2010, and her contribution to their project Powerwords has been translated into German.

Chair:

Maísa Edwards

Maísa Edwards is a Joint International Relations PhD Candidate at King's College London and the University of São Paulo. Her research topic explores Brazil and the Zone of Peace and Cooperation of the South Atlantic (ZOPACAS) and Brazilian diplomatic and defence relations in the South Atlantic (1986 – 2013). Maísa is also the founder of the Talk Books With ME (@talk_books_with_me) project which has developed into a multilingual and multicultural literature community. One book, poem and story at a time, Maísa seeks to increase readership in different languages and bring forth multilingual and multicultural literature to a wider audience.

Organisers:

Maísa Edwards (PhD Candidate – King’s College London and University of São Paulo)
Ana Aurora Borges (Arts Manager and Curator, BA (Hons) Linguistics and Literature at the Federal University of São Paulo)
Dr Vinicius Mariano de Carvalho (Director of the King’s Brazil Institute and Vice Dean International at King’s College London)
Dr Ana Elena González-Treviño (Director of the Centre for Mexican Studies)
Dr Ana Maria Sousa Aguiar de Medeiros (Director of the Modern Languages Centre)
Maya Boustany (Student Engagement Officer – King’s Global Institutes).

Ana de Medeiros resized
Yara
Sitara
MAISA EDWARDS Resized

Event details


Bush House
Strand campus, 30 Aldwych, London, WC2B 4BG