About

Welcome to the research blog for the LINCS project.
LINCS stands for Language Integration and New Communities in a Multicultural Society, and it is being financed by the Irish Research Council and the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions as part of the CAROLINE fellowship scheme.
At the core of the project is a collaboration between the Italian department of the National University of Ireland in Galway and the NGO Tamat in Perugia, Italy. Andrea Ciribuco, a researcher from NUI Galway will spend two years (October 2017-October 2019) in Perugia, working side by side with the NGO staff, doing research on the language learning strategies of migrants, and the opportunities that they open up in economic as well as creative terms.
Due to its geographical location, Italy is centrally involved in addressing the movement and displacement of peoples from their home countries, especially at the time of the refugee crisis. According to the Italian Ministry of Internal Affairs, 181.436 migrants arrived in Italy by sea in 2016 (source: Dossier Statistico Immigrazione 2017)  – but the current arrival of migrants through the Mediterranean route is only one of the several aspects of mobility into and outside of Italy in modern times. This research is not especially concerned with the moment of arrival but with the process of (linguistic) survival.
The key questions are:
  • How do migrants adapt and translate themselves in a new territory? How do they make sense of the new environment, and how do they position themselves in it, using a new language?
  • What translation/non-translation is evident – what remains in the home language and never moves to the new language? How can those ‘untranslatable’ elements become part of a transformed society?
  • What work opportunities are created by language learning, and what part do the migrant’s personal story and background have in that?
  • What are the opportunities and the difficulties for migrants entering the world of literary, musical, filmic or theatrical production?  What visibility is allowed to personal stories?
Through the combination of Dr. Ciribuco’s work on migrant literature with Tamat’s experience in international cooperation, migrant training & support and human rights awareness, the research enables a look at a wide range of opportunities that language creates or denies for migrants, both in the job market and in the logics of cultural production.

People

 

Researcher: Andrea Ciribuco, NUI Galway

Andrea Ciribuco moved to Ireland in 2011, when he started a PhD at NUI Galway in the department of Italian, as a recipient of the Hardiman Research Scholarship. His PhD research explored matters of cultural identity in the language of migrant literature, focusing on the Italian American author and translator Emanuel Carnevali.

Since 2012, he taught Italian language and culture at NUI Galway at undergraduate, pprofile pic nui galwayostgraduate and adult education level.

His works on migrant literature and culture (especially Italian American) have appeared in international journals (see list on ResearchGate).

Prior to starting this fellowship, he worked on the IRC New Foundations project “My Story – My words: Language and Migration“, exploring language rights and multilingual creativity in contemporary Ireland.

Principal Investigator:    Dr. Anne O’Connor, NUI Galway

Dr. Anne O’Connor is senior lecturer in Italian at NUI Galway, where she has taught since 2003. She has been the recipient of scholarships, fellowships and awards from the IRC, IRCHSS, the Royal Irish Academy, NAIRTL, AHRC, the Department of Foreign Affairs and the European Union. Her research interests include nineteenth-century history and Photo Anne O'Connorliterature; translation studies; travel literature; transnational Ireland; cultural mediators, language teaching methodologies and community-based learning. She has published extensively in these areas: her latest book is Translation and Language in Nineteenth-Century Ireland: A European Perspective.