Creative Multilingualism

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The Creative Multilingualism Network complements a four-year AHRC-funded project on the same topic, which forms part of the AHRC’s Open World Research Initiative. It offers an open forum to facilitate involvement of colleagues and partners from diverse disciplines and institutions in our research.

The aim of our research project is to investigate the nexus between multilingualism and creativity, focusing on the following research questions:

1)            How does multilingualism stimulate creativity, what types of creativity are involved in multilingualism, and how do they manifest themselves in multilingual processes?

2)            How can the theory and practice of multilingual creativity strengthen take-up and learning of languages in schools and wider society, and enhance their perceived value?

The funded research includes projects on metaphor, naming, intelligibility across cognate languages, languages in the creative economy and world literatures, prismatic translation, and language learning. The research team is from Modern Languages, Oriental Studies, English, Linguistics, Cultural Studies, Education, Anthropology and Biology, and we collectively have expertise in over 40 languages – but there are of course many more disciplines and languages that might shed light on our research questions.

The Network is also open to exploring other aspects of the interplay between multilingualism and creativity, and we welcome methodological challenges that might arise out of a dialogue between disciplines. We will seek to tease out the disciplinary implications of linguistic diversity as a phenomenon that is at the heart of the humanities. Simultaneously, we want to exploit the riches of the humanities to reinvigorate the identity of Modern Languages across sectors and social strata.

To find out more, visit the website here.


Bhee Bellew

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