This three year project is funded by the British Academy in the form of a Newton Advanced Fellowship awarded to Dr Arlene Archer (UCT) in collaboration with Prof Carey Jewitt, University College London (2017 – 2020). The research aims to understand how better to enable a diverse body of students access to Higher Education through new forms of writing and multimodal academic discourse. It has three broad analytical themes.
Multimodal academic voice and argument.
The analysis explores how voice and argument are constructed through the relationships between different modes (such as images and writing) and consider what aspects of argument are presented in what mode in student-produced texts. The analysis also examines multimodal citation practices.
Writing in different modes and media
This analytical theme examines how the mode of writing is re-configured as manifest in different media, such as the mobile phone, the computer screen, or the printed word-processed page. The materiality of the media, the mobility of the media, the imagined audiences, the spaces and places of writing, will provide additional routes of exploration.
Teaching and assessing writing in a digital age.
This analytical theme focuses on teaching writing in diverse and developing contexts, taking into consideration the issues researched above, including student voice, argument and citation.
Thus far, we have participated in numerous research and training events, presented at conferences, and published a number of articles and book chapters.
See https://changingwriting.wordpress.com/ for more details.