This paper analyses photojournalistic representations of arguably the most pressing issue faced by modern society: climate change. It also critically evaluates representations of COP26, the annual climate change conference held most recently in Glasgow during November 2021.

Dissertation written on the representations of mental health and masculinity in UK rap music.

In order to inform UNESCO’s international standards of heritage and remembrance practice, this report discursively deconstructs three cultural representations of Haitian and Dominican memory: ‘1937’ and ‘Creating Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist At Work’ by Edwidge Danticat, and ‘The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao’ by Junot Díaz. Written within a comparative framework, it analyses how various narratives – namely victimhood, perpetration, resistance, entrapment and escapism – are mediated in different ways through different formats, particularly the fictional/non-fictional distinction. It also applies concepts from memory studies to make connections with wider sociocultural issues in modern-day Haiti and the DR. Overall, this report posits that these cases are highly informative for UNESCO’s standards of memory practice, given their core substratum of generic features shared across the boundaries of nations, histories, and media, their additional abundance of distinctive features, and their conceptualisation of memory as a diachronic, contemporary phenomenon.

Based on the misguided belief that linguistic compartmentalisation assists foreign language learning, the general consensus in English Language Teaching (hereafter ELT) has, for a long time, discouraged plurilingual pedagogical strategies (López and González-Davies, 2016, p. 68). It was thought that permitting the simultaneous presence of the students’ first language (L1) and second language (L2) would result in a lack of interest or need to use their L2, a reduction in exposure to the L2, and interference between the L1 and L2, otherwise known as negative transfer (ibid.). However, current research has suggested that the concepts of code-switching and translanguaging have the capacity to support multilingual speakers in processing meaning and experiences, as well as gaining a deeper understanding and knowledge of the languages in use and the content being taught (Lewis et al, 2012).

In terms of issues surrounding class, politics, gender, war, and even race, the content of Peaky Blinders (2013-) is so contextually rich that it almost seems created for academic analysis. To date, literature on one of the most popular contemporary European crime series has somewhat narrowly focused on its musical soundtrack (Shine, 2017), historical context (Long, 2017), or hints at the dangers of populism and fascism (Pagello, 2021). When the literature on Peaky Blinders has touched upon more implicitly political themes, such as the representation of masculinity and mental health, it does so with dismissive condemnation (Larke-Walsh, 2019). It rarely considers its lessons, capacity for destigmatisation, or potential applications amid the current sociopsychological climate, in which many individuals are being pushed closer to the precipice. In the UK alone, around fifteen people daily committed
suicide during 2020, with three-quarters of these being men (Office for National Statistics, 2021). In this light, the current literature on Peaky Blinders fails to recontextualise the series in the wider context of the dynamic between masculinity and mental health issues,
particularly those relating to consumption and suicide.

Within the state of California lies Los Angeles (L.A.), one of the most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities in America, ‘a language hub and a fantastic laboratory in which to observe the role and interaction of linguistic communities’ (Parodi, 2014, p. 33). This report focuses on the hierarchical relationship between the three most spoken languages in L.A. – English, Spanish, and Korean – drawing on media data from the L.A. Times. It uses quantitative data about language speakers, analyses the ideological beliefs held by residents, media, and politicians towards these languages, and evaluates academic insights regarding the future implications of these linguistic relationships.