Close
VIRTUAL EVENT: Staying in touch: Maintaining transnational identities during Covid-19
16 February 2021, 1:00 pm–2:00 pm
This talk will briefly explore how the Covid-19 situation may have impacted transnational practices for adolescents.
This event is free.
Event Information
Open to
- All
Availability
- Yes
Cost
- Free
Organiser
-
Sanaa Al-Busaidy
About the Lecture
Transnationalism may be understood as the way that individuals endeavour to maintain their connections with friends and family across two (or more) cultures and countries, as well as their own identity. In an age of fast travel and instant communication, it may seem simple for people, especially young people, to sustain their connection with their country of origin. However, the scope for adolescents to develop transnational identities may be curtailed in a number of ways: their ability to travel freely is restricted; they may have a limited knowledge of the language of the country, etc. In this talk, I will discuss how, for Polish teenagers living in the UK, many transnational practices are limited; I will also briefly explore how the Covid-19 situation may have intensified these problems, and the implications of this.
About the Speaker
Dr Sara Young
Senior Teaching Fellow at UCL
Sara is a Senior Teaching Fellow at UCL Institute of Education; prior to this, she lived in Greece and Hungary for several years, where she worked in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) and FLE (French as a Foreign Language).
Sara's research interests focus on the relationship between language and identity, especially in the context of contemporary and post-Brexit Britain, where she also works in the field of Polish migration. She specialises in narrative inquiry, exploring how narratives are used to construct identity. Most recently, Sara has been researching the impact of the Covid-19 lockdown on Polish Saturday schools in the UK.