Kurdish as a Heritage Language in Diaspora: Ethnographic Encounters
Fri, 11 Jun 2021 15:00 - 17:00 British Summer Time (UTC+1)
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In this event, we discuss the sociolinguistics of Kurdish as a heritage language in Canada, Sweden, Japan and the United States.
About this event
Kurdish as a Heritage Language in Diaspora: Ethnographic Encounters
Organiser | Birgül Yılmaz
UCL Institute of Education
PANELISTS
Anne Schluter
Constructing a metalinguistic community through Kurdish: Language and diasporic belonging among members of The Japan Kurdish Culture Association
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Anne Schluter is an Assistant Professor in The Hong Kong Polytechnic University’s Department of English. In addition to focusing on Kurdish migrants in Japan, she also studies the sociolinguistic aspects of Kurdish migration within Turkey as well as migrant domestic labour at a U.S. based multilingual cleaning company.
Jaffer Sheyholislami
Kurdish as a nonstate heritage language in Canada: Doubly minoritized
Jaffer Sheyholislami is an Associate Professor in Applied Linguistics & Discourse Studies. Professor Sheyholislami has published extensively, in both English and Kurdish, in the areas of Kurdish linguistics, sociolinguistics, language policy and planning, and discourse analysis. He is the author of Kurdish Identity, Discourse and New Media, Palgrave Macmillan (2011). He is currently the lead editor for the upcoming volume Oxford Handbook of Kurdish Linguistics.
Nubin Ciziri
The limits of symbolic legitimacy: The case of mother tongue courses in Sweden
Nubin Ciziri is a PhD candidate at Sociology of Education, Department of Education, Uppsala University. Her main research interest involves migration studies with a focus on the education of refugees. Her current project analyses the dispositions of refugee families towards education in Sweden with a focus on ethnicity, language and community while the target group is Kurds from Syria.
Anne Reath Warren
Constructions of Kurdish in mother tongue instruction in Sweden – defining and redefining linguistic authority, authenticity and legitimacy
Anne Reath Warren is a Senior Lecturer in Education (multilingualism and newcomers’ learning) at Uppsala University, Sweden. Her research focuses on education for multilingual students, including newcomers and students who speak languages in addition to Swedish at home. She is currently working with in-service education about multilingualism for teachers, schools and municipalities throughout Sweden.
Amir Sharifi
The Hermeneutics of Autoethnography in the Context of Kurdish as a Heritage Language
Amir Sharifi is a linguist and teaches at California State University Long Beach. His seminal contribution has been in the domain of language and literacy socialization in an Iranian American heritage school in Los Angeles. He has conducted research on Kurdish as a heritage language in Southern California. He is also an advocate of language and human rights and a frequent contributor to various Kurdish publications in diaspora.
DISCUSSANTS
Prof. Dr. Christoph Schroeder
Christoph Schroeder is a Professor for German as a Second Language at the Department German Studies, University of Potsdam, Germany. His research interests include the acquisition of literacy under conditions of multilingualism and migration, heritage language research, language contact, Turkish-German contrastive linguistics and Turkish linguistics.
Haidar Khezri
Haidar Khezri is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Modern Languages & Literatures at the University of Central Florida. He is currently co-editing The Oxford Handbook of Kurdish Linguistics and The Walter De Gruyter Companion to Kurdish Literature. His recent work, Sorani Kurdish: An Elementary Textbook, is currently under design at IUB’s Center for the Languages of the Central Asian Region for publication by Georgetown University Press. His current monograph project deals with the reception of Franz Kafka by Middle Eastern literary circles, particularly after the Arab Spring and the Iranian Green Movement.
