Michel Blanc Lecture: Dr Sally Cook "From Healing to Learning: Multilingualism, Trauma and TESOL Practice."
When:
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Venue:
Birkbeck Main Building, Malet Street
This lecture explores how language, relationships, and context can foster healing, belonging, and identity reconstruction in Teaching English as a Second Language (TESOL) practice. Drawing on longitudinal research with survivors of torture and displacement, it highlights how trauma-informed and multilingual approaches can create emotionally safe, person-centred learning environments.
Sally Cook Biography:
Sally Cook was a former Doctoral student in the former department of ‘Applied Linguistics and Communication’, graduating in 2019. She is now an Honorary Research Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London. Her research examines how multilingualism, trauma, and identity intersect in contexts of displacement and exploitation. Drawing on longitudinal interpretative phenomenological research, she demonstrates how later-learned languages function as embodied linguistic spaces for emotional expression, identity reconstruction, and the reconfiguration of agency.
Contact name: Lisa McEntee-Atalianis
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