Super-diversity and the future

Wednesday marked the final day of my current funding for the Superdivercity Project, as a Leadership Fellowship with the AHRC. I’m incredibly thankful for the time I’ve had to work on the project over the last year and half. I’ve gathered some great insights about the language and religion in this city and how people understand themselves and others, and how language and discourse is important to making those identities meaningful in the world. This is particularly important as the census data released this week confirmed that Birmingham is one of the first super-diverse cities in the country. So much good work is going on in this beautiful city, bringing people together of different faiths and backgrounds.

If you’re interested in the academic outputs, they are currently four that I’m working on:

Pihlaja, Stephen. (forthcoming) Abstraction in Storytelling. Narrative Inquiry.

Pihlaja, Stephen. (under review) Using Positioning Analysis to Trace Religious Identity in Discourse. Discourse Studies. 

Pihlaja, Stephen, Richardson, Peter, and Charles Mueller (in preparation) Cognitive Blending and Positioning in Talk about Religious Diversity. Cognitive Linguistics. 

Pihlaja, Stephen. (under contract) Language and Religion in the Superdiverse City. CUP Elements.

Each one of these will highlight a different element of the project analysis that I’ve done and the final one, which will be a short monograph on the project, will talk about all the work that I’ve done in a more complete way. I’m very much looking forward to seeing these come out over the next two years. I’ll also be applying for some follow-on funding to help me better promote the infographic I developed and find new ways to share it with others, ideally through professional development training for teachers, parents, and school governors, for presentations in schools, and for religious organisations. I’ll be working on those ideas in the coming months.

Please do continue to the follow the project at it goes forward and I will do my best to keep it updated and everyone informed ab