The Centre for Research in Language and Heritage (CREL) is founded on the view that a powerful way to address the world’s most complex social, economic and environmental challenges is through a better awareness and understanding of the things that make us humans. By exploring our unique ability to speak, to create texts, to build societies and shape landscapes – and how these and other practices may change over time and space, CREL’s world-leading, interdisciplinary researchers seek to construct a healthier, happier and more equal society.
We aim to:
- Create and support a high-quality inclusive academic community, recruiting, mentoring and upskilling members at every stage of their career.
- Foster multisectoral networks of researchers, stakeholders and policy advisors within and across centres at university, regional, national and international levels to increase opportunities for new funding and multidisciplinary publications.
- Provide multidisciplinary, evidence-based responses of the highest quality, arising from rigorous specialised knowledge of linguistics, history and literature, and active collaboration in multisectoral networks.
- Engage with professional organisations, NGOs, civil societies, policymakers, students, and local and central government to raise awareness about inequalities stemming from inadequate attention to different language needs and to the value of literary education and heritage.
- Influence social structures, policy and our academic disciplines through rigorous and impactful research and knowledge exchange activities.
Teaching and training
CREL provides a range of external and internal teaching and training. We have recently launched a new course for undergraduates on Clinical Linguistics alongside our existing course on Foundation for Linguistics, which are core for those studying speech and language therapy. Among our Masters-level courses are MAs in Applied linguistics, Creative Writing and English: Literary London. An MA on Public history and heritage is under consideration.
We also offer statistics and quantitative methods training for postgraduate students and any member of staff. The Centre hosts the Science Practice Hub (SciPHub), founded in partnership with ILD in 2019. The SciPHub offers regular training on statistics, convenes science dialogues about key issues of methodology in research and captains the Open Science initiative of the ReproducibiliTea Club, which made the Çï¿ûÊÓƵ part of the (a national peer-led consortium investigating the factors that contribute to robust research).
Externally, we are the leading partner with the University of Southampton for a postgraduate research Summer school on Multilingualism.