Adeeba Ahmad
Academic and research departments
Language, Literacies and Learning Research Group, Surrey Institute of Education.About
My research project
Higher Education Internationalisation in Pakistan: Role of Chinese language policyWhile Internationalisation of higher education is a growing research area globally, the role of language in internationalising higher education, is less discussed. My research interest is to investigate the role of recently implemented Chinese language learning policy in higher education institutions of Pakistan. The context of this initiative is the multibillion-dollar China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) trade agreement between the two countries. I intend to employ Fairclough ‘s (1989) Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of the Chinese language policy documents to examine how internationalization is framed, in addition to Chinese language teacher interviews and Chinese language student focus group discussions to explore their experiences with regards to the Chinese language learning initiative.
Supervisors
While Internationalisation of higher education is a growing research area globally, the role of language in internationalising higher education, is less discussed. My research interest is to investigate the role of recently implemented Chinese language learning policy in higher education institutions of Pakistan. The context of this initiative is the multibillion-dollar China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) trade agreement between the two countries. I intend to employ Fairclough ‘s (1989) Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of the Chinese language policy documents to examine how internationalization is framed, in addition to Chinese language teacher interviews and Chinese language student focus group discussions to explore their experiences with regards to the Chinese language learning initiative.
Publications
What do literacy events look and feel like for doctoral students, and how do these events overlap intertextually, materially and relationally? The last three decades have seen a rapid diversification in doctoral education where new opportunities for study, combined with an increasingly competitive landscape, have disrupted what it means to undertake a doctorate, as well as reshaping the literacy practices that comprise doctoral experiences in new ways that have not been fully explored. To understand literacies in new ways, we put to work the construct of literacy-as-event, and engage ideas from assemblage theory, to theorise the relationality of literacy practices. Crucially, our study seeks to examine how literacies are emergent and entangled within a wider network of relations. This article draws on data from interviews involving critical incidents with 12 doctoral students, in order to unpack the literacy moments, beyond the thesis, that comprise students' experiences. Our data suggest that we can understand doctoral literacies, not as bounded occurrences, but as assemblages of practices. We contend that thinking with concepts of assemblage and of event offers new insights into the evolving experiences of doctoral students, as well as offering an enriched understanding of literacies and literacy research.
Due to a changing higher education sector, doctoral literacies are evolving. Students are increasingly expected to navigate a diverse range of literacy practices beyond the traditional monograph. Engaging ideas from the fields of Academic Literacies and New Literacy Studies, this study sought to explore what doctoral literacy practices students are engaged in and how these are acquired. Findings revealed that whilst some students maximised opportunities for making material and relational connections, others experienced unfamiliarity and discomfort due to the often tacit expectations of doctoral literacy practices. The contributions of this paper lie in the surfacing the range of doctoral literacy practices and highlighting the need for the doctoral community to make doctoral literacy practices visible and familiar.