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Language Acts and Worldmaking is a flagship project funded by the AHRC Open World Research Initiative, which aims to regenerate and transform modern language learning by foregrounding language's power to shape how we live and make our worlds.

Language Acts and Worldmaking examines language as a material and historical force which acts as the means by which individuals construct their personal, local, transnational and spiritual identities. This we call ‘worldmaking’. Our case study is Iberia, its global empires and contact zones, which stretch across Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas. This vast multilingual and multicultural terrain dramatically illustrates the potential of modern language learning to understand and shape the world we live in. Learning a language means understanding the historicity of concepts, beliefs and social practices—how they operate in the past and present. Our research and partnerships demonstrate the indispensable value of language learning for understanding how societies are structured and governed and for empowering culturally aware and self-reflective citizens.

For more information on the project, please visit our website developed by King's Digital Lab.

 

Projects

Image of detailed wall and ceiling carpentry
Travelling Concepts

Strand Leads: AbdoolKarim Vakil and Julian Weiss. The Iberian Peninsula is both the originator and product of a polycentric process of global colonization; its history constitutes a workshop for questioning how language constructs the world. In a journey that takes us from Brazil to China, and through multiple languages, we investigate the ideological work performed by the vocabularies that historically cluster around Iberia, whether embedded in individual words, phrases or extended literary forms (narrative, lyric, history). Concepts such as ‘global’, ‘culture’, ‘civilisation’, ‘tolerance’, ‘Europe’ and the binary East/ West are central to the way Iberian history has been imagined both inside and outside the Peninsula, from the Middle Ages to the present day.

    Image of stained glass with yellow and blue patterns.
    Translation Acts

    Strand Lead: Catherine Boyle. In Translation Acts, the focus is on the creation of dramatic narratives through theatre in translation and performance. We take up travelling concepts like ’global’ and ‘tolerance’ and explore our lived experience of them. Using the creative capacity of theatre to be world-inventing, creating known and imagined worlds on stage, we question how ideas and beliefs cross cultures, time and space and how we act through the languages we use and create. In our practice we will use participants’ innate and learned language knowledge to translate and recreate theatre texts in ways that will radically intervene in our understanding of cultural co-existence in the present.

      Image of golden walls with intricate designs.
      Digital Mediations

      Strand Lead: Paul Spence. Digital Mediations explores interactions and tensions between digital culture and Modern Languages research. We examine how digitally mediated culture—whether emerging as born digital artefacts or digitised remediations of pre-digital objects—is constructed, and ask what kinds of 'translation' are enacted as information enters and leaves the digital sphere. We research the interactions from multiple perspectives, reviewing methodologies for studying digital content from a multilingual perspective, while appraising the extent to which digital data, as a complex cultural product in its own right, represents a meaningful record accessible to Modern Languages research and learning.

        image of a stained glass window with blue and yellow flower patterns.
        Loaded Meanings

        Strand Lead: Chris Pountain. Loaded Meanings invites reflection on the nature of language and its historical development by investigating the linguistic consequences of the single most important cultural contact observable in the history of the languages of western Europe, namely, the dissemination of ‘learned’ borrowings (words borrowed directly from or coined on the basis of Latin or Greek) in Ibero-Romance. Originally introduced in the written language of the culturally élite, a large number of these words have become part of frequent everyday usage and so lie at the heart of ordinary speakers’ ‘worldmaking’.

          Image of markings in the sand
          Diasporic Identities and the Politics of Language Teaching

          Strand Leads: Inma Álvarez and Mara Fuertes Gutierrez. This strand takes an applied approach by working with language teachers, active worldmakers who move seamlessly between different linguistic and cultural worlds. Their inner selves, their personal and professional identities, are moulded and enriched by their experiences of diaspora. Highly skilled at worldmaking, teachers draw on their own rich linguistic and cultural resources for translating and re-making cultural concepts. Through this research, we seek to understand how teachers see themselves in their role as mediators between languages and cultures and how they perform this role in their teaching practice. This research also entails a critical appraisal of the institutional and political issues around the provision of modern language teaching in the UK from the perspective of the teachers.

            close up image of a stained glass window with a red, yellow and blue design
            Language Transitions

            Strand Leads: Debra Kelly and Ana de Medeiros. This work takes a research-informed approach to the practical aspects of learning and teaching modern foreign languages and cultures. It targets transitions—those border zones of learning between stages that have become more of a hindrance than a stepping stone for so many language learners—by working on the curriculum at university level, by working with the curriculum at school level, and by trialling transition and foundation courses that allow entry at each further level languages study. It also seeks to empower young students to use their innate language-learning skills, including the mobilisation of their bi- and multi-lingual home experiences.

              News

              'Multilingualism is seen as a problem' – valuing languages in university settings

              Speakers debated the possibility of achieving true multilingualism in universities at the latest Language Debates event on 23 June, hosted by Language Acts...

              250623 multilingual university - jarad zimbler, jo angouri, terry lamb (sarah mclaughlin)

              PhD student in Languages, Literatures and Cultures wins King's Outstanding Thesis Prize

              Mary Ann Vargas, PhD student in the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, has been awarded a King’s Outstanding Thesis Prize 2025.

              barrio performance (Cruzma Vallespir)

              Events

              15Jul

              Worldmaking on Stage: Hearing Each Other

              Setting the scene for a week of play readings from Latin America, Portugal, and Spain, presented in English translation every evening at Omnibus Theatre.

              15Jul

              Out of the Wings – Omnibus Theatre

              Out of the Wings presents readings of plays from six different countries, all in English translation, and in the UK for the first time.

              23Jun

              Language Debates: The Multilingual University

              What is the current place of multilingualism and plurilingualism in learning, teaching and research?

              Please note: this event has passed.

              13Jun

              Performance and the Futures of Translation

              What futures do acts of translation hold in a world in disarray?

              Please note: this event has passed.

              27May

              Encounters, Legacies and Trajectories: A Research Colloquium on Medieval and Early Modern Iberian Literary Worlds

              Sharing current projects and fostering future lines of research in the study of medieval and early modern Iberia and its contact zones across the globe.

              Please note: this event has passed.

              Reading

              Attitudes towards digital culture and technology in the Modern Languages

              Language Provision in UK MFL Departments 2018 Survey

               

              Related courses 

              • 5AASB066 The Study of Gender in Spanish American Literature and Culture (Latin America) (Spanish)
              • 5AASB100 Language Acts and Worldmaking in Medieval and Early Modern Spain(Early Modern)
              • 6AASC013 Historical Change and Cultural Expression in the Southern Cone(Spanish)
              • 6AASC074 Sefarad: The Jews of Medieval Spain in Literary History and Cultural Memory(Spanish)

              Projects

              Image of detailed wall and ceiling carpentry
              Travelling Concepts

              Strand Leads: AbdoolKarim Vakil and Julian Weiss. The Iberian Peninsula is both the originator and product of a polycentric process of global colonization; its history constitutes a workshop for questioning how language constructs the world. In a journey that takes us from Brazil to China, and through multiple languages, we investigate the ideological work performed by the vocabularies that historically cluster around Iberia, whether embedded in individual words, phrases or extended literary forms (narrative, lyric, history). Concepts such as ‘global’, ‘culture’, ‘civilisation’, ‘tolerance’, ‘Europe’ and the binary East/ West are central to the way Iberian history has been imagined both inside and outside the Peninsula, from the Middle Ages to the present day.

                Image of stained glass with yellow and blue patterns.
                Translation Acts

                Strand Lead: Catherine Boyle. In Translation Acts, the focus is on the creation of dramatic narratives through theatre in translation and performance. We take up travelling concepts like ’global’ and ‘tolerance’ and explore our lived experience of them. Using the creative capacity of theatre to be world-inventing, creating known and imagined worlds on stage, we question how ideas and beliefs cross cultures, time and space and how we act through the languages we use and create. In our practice we will use participants’ innate and learned language knowledge to translate and recreate theatre texts in ways that will radically intervene in our understanding of cultural co-existence in the present.

                  Image of golden walls with intricate designs.
                  Digital Mediations

                  Strand Lead: Paul Spence. Digital Mediations explores interactions and tensions between digital culture and Modern Languages research. We examine how digitally mediated culture—whether emerging as born digital artefacts or digitised remediations of pre-digital objects—is constructed, and ask what kinds of 'translation' are enacted as information enters and leaves the digital sphere. We research the interactions from multiple perspectives, reviewing methodologies for studying digital content from a multilingual perspective, while appraising the extent to which digital data, as a complex cultural product in its own right, represents a meaningful record accessible to Modern Languages research and learning.

                    image of a stained glass window with blue and yellow flower patterns.
                    Loaded Meanings

                    Strand Lead: Chris Pountain. Loaded Meanings invites reflection on the nature of language and its historical development by investigating the linguistic consequences of the single most important cultural contact observable in the history of the languages of western Europe, namely, the dissemination of ‘learned’ borrowings (words borrowed directly from or coined on the basis of Latin or Greek) in Ibero-Romance. Originally introduced in the written language of the culturally élite, a large number of these words have become part of frequent everyday usage and so lie at the heart of ordinary speakers’ ‘worldmaking’.

                      Image of markings in the sand
                      Diasporic Identities and the Politics of Language Teaching

                      Strand Leads: Inma Álvarez and Mara Fuertes Gutierrez. This strand takes an applied approach by working with language teachers, active worldmakers who move seamlessly between different linguistic and cultural worlds. Their inner selves, their personal and professional identities, are moulded and enriched by their experiences of diaspora. Highly skilled at worldmaking, teachers draw on their own rich linguistic and cultural resources for translating and re-making cultural concepts. Through this research, we seek to understand how teachers see themselves in their role as mediators between languages and cultures and how they perform this role in their teaching practice. This research also entails a critical appraisal of the institutional and political issues around the provision of modern language teaching in the UK from the perspective of the teachers.

                        close up image of a stained glass window with a red, yellow and blue design
                        Language Transitions

                        Strand Leads: Debra Kelly and Ana de Medeiros. This work takes a research-informed approach to the practical aspects of learning and teaching modern foreign languages and cultures. It targets transitions—those border zones of learning between stages that have become more of a hindrance than a stepping stone for so many language learners—by working on the curriculum at university level, by working with the curriculum at school level, and by trialling transition and foundation courses that allow entry at each further level languages study. It also seeks to empower young students to use their innate language-learning skills, including the mobilisation of their bi- and multi-lingual home experiences.

                          News

                          'Multilingualism is seen as a problem' – valuing languages in university settings

                          Speakers debated the possibility of achieving true multilingualism in universities at the latest Language Debates event on 23 June, hosted by Language Acts...

                          250623 multilingual university - jarad zimbler, jo angouri, terry lamb (sarah mclaughlin)

                          PhD student in Languages, Literatures and Cultures wins King's Outstanding Thesis Prize

                          Mary Ann Vargas, PhD student in the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, has been awarded a King’s Outstanding Thesis Prize 2025.

                          barrio performance (Cruzma Vallespir)

                          Events

                          15Jul

                          Worldmaking on Stage: Hearing Each Other

                          Setting the scene for a week of play readings from Latin America, Portugal, and Spain, presented in English translation every evening at Omnibus Theatre.

                          15Jul

                          Out of the Wings – Omnibus Theatre

                          Out of the Wings presents readings of plays from six different countries, all in English translation, and in the UK for the first time.

                          23Jun

                          Language Debates: The Multilingual University

                          What is the current place of multilingualism and plurilingualism in learning, teaching and research?

                          Please note: this event has passed.

                          13Jun

                          Performance and the Futures of Translation

                          What futures do acts of translation hold in a world in disarray?

                          Please note: this event has passed.

                          27May

                          Encounters, Legacies and Trajectories: A Research Colloquium on Medieval and Early Modern Iberian Literary Worlds

                          Sharing current projects and fostering future lines of research in the study of medieval and early modern Iberia and its contact zones across the globe.

                          Please note: this event has passed.

                          Reading

                          Attitudes towards digital culture and technology in the Modern Languages

                          Language Provision in UK MFL Departments 2018 Survey

                           

                          Related courses 

                          • 5AASB066 The Study of Gender in Spanish American Literature and Culture (Latin America) (Spanish)
                          • 5AASB100 Language Acts and Worldmaking in Medieval and Early Modern Spain(Early Modern)
                          • 6AASC013 Historical Change and Cultural Expression in the Southern Cone(Spanish)
                          • 6AASC074 Sefarad: The Jews of Medieval Spain in Literary History and Cultural Memory(Spanish)

                          Our Partners

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                          Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC)

                          Open World Research Initiative - OWRI logo

                          OWRI - Open world Research Initiative

                          The Open University logo

                          The Open University

                          University of Westminster logo

                          University of Westminster