Six reasons why these boots are made for walking (interviews) (by Lauren Godfrey-Smith)

For us at BILD, part of doing critical sociolinguistics means questioning, challenging, and pushing the boundaries of the way we consider language in society. It can also mean pushing the boundaries of the way we conduct research about languages in society. My PhD research is about non-classroom language anxiety, and when I started planning my study, I knew that I wanted it to reflect this notion of questioning, challenging, and pushing boundaries. One of the ways that I did this was at the methodological level, using walking interviews as one of my sources of data. So, in celebration of walking interviews, I present to you six reasons to love (and maybe try!) walking interviews. 

A note from Tasmania on monolingualism and the power of English (by Claire Jansen)

Claire Jansen is undertaking her PhD with a research scholarship at the University of Tasmania. She is based in the city of Hobart, which is somewhere between Melbourne and Antarctica on the map. Claire is writing her dissertation on the effect of Australia’s post WWII migration history on popular representations of Australia’s national identity. Her work crosses the fields of cultural, adaptation, film, literary and migration studies, and frequently touches on the themes of language, identity and belonging. She also tutors in Gender Studies and works part-time with the Tasmanian Writers’ Centre on their young writers’ program. As well as academic writing, Claire writes poetry and fiction. Some of her work can be read here: https://utas.academia.edu/ClaireJansen or here: http://claire-jansen.tumblr.com/

A journey in the unsettled world with language(s) and unsettled self (by Rubina Khanam)

Rubina Khanam is a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Education at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan. Her doctoral research focuses on language policy and planning in postcolonial contexts. Prior to her graduate studies in Canada, she lived in South Korea for three years while she pursued her Master’s in Applied Linguistics. Her MA research examined discourse markers across speech contexts. She completed her primary, secondary and undergraduate studies in Bangladesh.