The interdisciplinary team of Warwick researchers has been assembled to work collaboratively with students to generate new approaches to cultural literacy. Student contributions are what steer our approach; through dialogic interrogations of multifacted subjects, we aim to work alongside students to achieve a rich and pluralistic understanding of how we can employ cultural literacy in our research, teaching, and personal experiences.
In addition to the Module Convenor, guest speakers from Warwick and from Monash University will also attend the sessions and provide insights into their own views of cultural literacy and their subject areas. This will enable us to take a truly interdisciplinary approach and engage with cultural literacy beyond disciplinary boundaries.

Module Convenor: Carolin Debray

E: C dot Debray at warwick dot ac dot uk

I am a doctoral researcher at the Centre for Applied Linguistics. My main resarch interests are in intercultural communication, politeness and relating. I have previously completed a Masters of Science in Intercultural Communication for Business and the Professions at the University of Warwick and a Bachelor of Arts in Area Studies Asia/Africa with a focus on South Asia at the Humboldt University Berlin. My interest in intercultural communication was sparked during my travels, studies and work in Brazil, South Asia and Syria and Palestine.
I am researching interactions in intercultural teams and team relations, as I see teamwork as a place in which stereotypes can be created, enacted but also overcome, making it an important field of study. I am particularly interested in the connections between dyadic relationships and group relationships, the establishment of relational and interactional norms and the interrelationship between transactional and relational aspects of communication in a task-focused environment.

This is my second year of teaching the Global Connections module, which I found very enriching in the past. I am also giving intercultural training workshops across the University of Warwick for outgoing and incoming students. In addition, I have previously taught Methods Seminars in the Centre of Applied Linguistics, supporting students in the completion of their Masters dissertation.

Birgit Breidenbach

E: B dot Breidenbach at warwick dot ac dot uk

I am a doctoral candidate in English and Comparative Literary Studies. Having obtained a BA in English, German and Slavonic Studies at JLU Gießen (Germany) and an MA in English and Comparative Literary Studies at Warwick, I am currently completing a research project on mood in the literature of European modernity from a comparative and interdisciplinary point of view. My research revolves around literary and cultural theory, modernity and affect studies. My interest in cultural literacy is closely connected to my work on reader-response criticism, a school of thought in literary studies that looks at the ways in which readers make sense of literary texts in conceptual, cognitive and culturally defined terms.

I have published on intermediality and translation studies and have previously taught on EN123 Modern World Literature, for which I was nominated for the Warwick Awards for Teaching Excellence for Postgraduates who Teach (WATE PGR) in 2016. For more information, please visit my webpage on the ECLS website.