The Bristol Centre for Linguistics at the University of the West of England

RAE

Staff and students

A key aspect of the team’s work has consisted in developing research capacity among staff in the School. As the Linguistics staff are based in a post-1992 university, a number of academic colleagues who were appointed prior to 1992 had little experience with research. In the context of the University’s UWE academic policy, which strongly encourages staff to develop individual research portfolios, the team have successfully integrated members of staff wishing to become research active into its research agenda. This was done not only via a one-to-one mentoring scheme initiated by the School of HLSS, but also and most importantly via joint work on the Learner Language project, which was initiated at School level. Since the establishment of the Learner Language Project in 2002, Beeching, Daller, Larrañaga (who resigned in 2006) and Treffers-Daller have worked together with less experienced colleagues from the School to collect, transcribe and analyse learner language data from the languages taught at UWE. This has resulted in joint conference papers and in three joint papers in Daller et al. (2007). Further support for emerging researchers was offered by including contributions of experienced and less experienced researchers in the Unit in a special issue of the Journal of Politeness Research edited by Beeching and Sara Mills (Sheffield Hallam). (The vacancy left by Larrañaga's departure has now been filled by the appointment of Sakel.)

Members of staff at UWE co-operate in PhD supervisions, to give junior staff supervision experience and to share good practice. Research training for PhD students is provided in the form of two 30 credit modules in Research Methods and a Research Portfolio, as well as through the annual Winter School. Several PhD students have also obtained financial support from the Departmental Research Committee for their research projects or conference attendance. The number of PhD students has grown considerably over the past three years, and continues to grow every year. The first successful completion was in 2003 of a full-time student (Hatipoğlu) on a School bursary (within 3 years). She is now Senior Lecturer in Linguistics in Ankara (METU) and her output includes a book submitted to Benjamins and an article in an international journal. A second PhD student completed in 2007 (a part-time student who completed within three years), and a third is submitting in October 2007. Currently nine PhD students (five overseas and four European students are enrolled on the Linguistics PhD programme, with two more enrolling in 2007/8. This growth in postgraduate provision is, again, a clear indication of the upward research trajectory of the Centre. Following the success of its application to the ESRC recognition exercise in 2007, at the next opportunity, the team intends to apply for 1+3 recognition of its new MA in English Language, which started in 2007/08.