Dr Birgül Yılmaz
Status/discipline:
Modern languages and cultures
Contact Details:
Current projects:
I am a critical sociolinguist, an applied linguist and an ethnographer, specialising in language and forced migration. My research interests are: (1) Sociolinguistics of forced migration: My interdisciplinary research in this area focuses on language in relation to education, humanitarianism, governmentality, international refugee law, and im/mobility infrastructure. I investigate the everyday communicative struggles and language learning practices of refugees including unaccompanied children in NGO shelters and the role of texts produced by the UNHCR and the European Union in governing refugee children. Currently, I am working on precarity, securitisation and communicative justice in two neighbourhoods of Athens. I explore the role of self-organisation and counter-culture in language learning and the linguistic practices of refugees and squatters in intercultural settings in Greece. (2) Heritage language learning, conflict and diaspora communities: In this research cluster, I focus on how heritage language learning processes of diaspora communities are shaped and negotiated in community based language classes in the UK. I am particularly interested in languages and identities, language ideologies, attitudes towards standard vs nonstandard languages, nationalism, conflict, social class, and gender, using interactional sociolinguistics and critical/discourse analysis and linguistic ethnography. I continue to expand on this work, which has influenced many researchers, via international collaborations in Europe and Noth America. (3) Critical ethnography and linguistic practice Questions of how languistic practice, inequality, social and educational injustices shape each other are at the heart of my empirical inquiries. I explore global challenges such as migration, refugees, humanitarian emergencies and language education under precarious conditions from a crticial ethnographic perspective. I am particularly interested in topics such as the ethnographic "self" and visual analysis: the use of video cameras and photography in ethnographic research.
