Aston University has an excellent track record with EU funded research and training programmes.

The project team is positioned in the English Department, the Centre for Language Research at Aston (CLaRA) and the Centre for Critical Approaches into Society and Culture (CCISC). The English department has an articulately applied focus, and the various sub-disciplinary areas are engaged in research with social, organisational and educational focus. The English department currently comprises a total of 14 members of staff who teach on a range of programmes at undergraduate and postgraduate level and who are all research active. 8 members specialise in Applied Linguistics, 3 in English Literature and 3 members specialise in TESOL. Department members are full-time employees, all have relevant PhD qualifications. Staff members are on research (30%) and teaching (70%) contract. Each member of the department is an active researcher and contribute to the undergraduate English single honours, English joint honours and TESOL programmes. Aston’s on-campus and distance TESOL programmes have attracted a steady number of students, the average yearly intake has been 15.

CLaRA is a research centre dedicated to language and language education. The Language Education special interest group has 14 members, from across modern foreign languages, English, and the Centre for English Language and Communication at Aston (CELCA). CCISC research centre brings together colleagues from Translation Studies, Sociology, Social and Public Policy, Politics, Psychology and Organization studies. It’s membership is over 40.

Both centres and the department have a multidisciplinary composition, have a strong research profile and wide experience in facilitating interdisciplinary events. They regularly organise research events delivered to interdisciplinary audiences and regularly hosts distinguished academic visitors. Two recent noteworthy events that have been co-hosted by the English department and the two research centres were the Annual Conventions of the British Association of Applied Linguistics (in 2015) and Discourse, Communication and the Enterprise (in 2017). Other relevant events the collaboration with the national centre for Content and Language Integrated Learning, including the hosting of workshops and presentations. CLaRA is also heavily involved in the work of the British Association for Applied Linguistics special interest group: Linguistics and Knowledge about Language in Education.

The TESOL team has previously led various teacher education projects relevant to this bid. These have included a 3-year TEMPUS project led by Dr Sue Garton in collaboration with Pedagogische Hochschule Freiburg Institut für Anglistik. The project involved the design and evaluation of modules for a blended learning MA level programme intended for secondary school teachers in Russia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. After the successful completion of this project further successful Erasmus and Erasmus+ projects have enabled the TESOL staff to visit the project members in their institutions and take part in the co-teaching of the Master’s level materials. This process has benefited all parties concerned encouraging the TESOL team to get insight into the local practices of teachers in the respective countries. The project members have visited Aston University on many occasions to take part in various professional development activities organised by the TESOL team.

Nur Kurtoglu-Hooton

Nur Kurtoglu-Hooton holds a PhD and is one of the members of the team at Aston University. Her role involves contributing to the design of research-informed, practice-based portfolio of teaching and training as well as reflective and evaluative tools to be employed in the project by all partner institutions and disseminated more widely after the project has been completed.

Muna Morris-Adams

Muna Morris-Adams holds a PhD and is a lecturer at Aston University. My role in the project is to contribute to the design of research-informed and practice-based tools for use in teacher training, with the aim of promoting internationalisation and employability. 

Joyce Lim

Joyce Lim holds a PhD and is a Lecturer in TESOL and Applied Linguistics at Aston University. Her research interests lie in corpus linguistics and language education, particularly in second language writing development. Her role in the project involves evaluating the effectiveness of the toolkit, which was developed from the previous project, and contributing to publishing the final evaluation project.