European Studies Unit

The European Studies Unit has a vigorous and interdisciplinary research culture that draws on a core of staff from the English Language and Intercultural Communication programme and Anglia Ruskin Language Centre, together with others working in related areas in the Departments of Humanities and Social Sciences, Law, and Built Environment.

In accordance with its strategic plan, the Unit is a venue for leading research in key aspects of contemporary European identity, diaspora, and their reflection in language, literature and film, urban spaces and legislative frameworks. Our research focuses primarily on empirical and theoretical approaches to cross-cultural, intercultural and transcultural communication, and can be broadly categorised under four heads:

• Linguistic and cultural identities
• Cultural and intercultural encounters in the creative imagination
• Justice and Communities Research Unit (JACRU)
• Research Unit for Intercultural and Transcultural Studies

These research clusters cover related groups of activity and colleagues have regularly worked together on joint publishing or conference projects, final products including an international conference on the negotiation of neo-colonial identities held in February 2007. There is also close collaboration with partners in different British and European universities resulting in a wide range of joint research outputs, for example:

• Guido Rings and Rikki Morgan-Tamosunas (eds./2003): European Cinema: Inside Out. Heidelberg: Winter. ISBN 3-8253-1474-X.
• Bronwen Walter, M.J. Hickman, S. Morgan, J. Bradley (2005): 'The limitations of whiteness and the boundaries of Englishness. Second-generation Irish identifications and positionings in multiethnic Britain', in: Ethnicities 5 (2), 160-182. ISSN 1468-7968.
• Anne Ife (2005): 'Intercultural dialogue: the challenge of communicating across language boundaries', in: G.Anderman, M. Rogers (eds) In And Out Of English: For Better, For Worse, Multilingual Matters, 286-298. ISBN 1-85359-788-0.
• Frank Leinen and Guido Rings (eds./2007): Worlds of Images, Worlds of Texts, Worlds of Comics. Romance encounters with the Ninth Art (orig.: Bilderwelten, Textwelten, Comicwelten. Romanistische Begegnungen mit der Neunten Kunst). Munich: Meidenbauer (forthcoming).
• Guido Rings and Anne Ife (eds./2008): Neo-colonial mentalities in contemporary Europe? Language and discourse in the construction of identities. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing (forthcoming)

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