Dr. Mary Hamilton, Visiting Scholar

We are delighted to have Dr. Mary Hamilton, Professor of Adult Learning and Literacy, Department of Educational Research, Lancaster University joining us at the Faculty of Education, The University of Western Ontario for the month of June. I have provided links to her talks here for those of you who were unable to attend.
Mary’s first talk:
Local Literacies in a Global Context: Reflections on Literacy and Learning in a Changing World
Tuesday June 7, 2011, 4:30pm in the Community Room (1139) at the Faculty of Education.

Abstract: In this talk Mary addressed literacy and learning as part of situated social practice. She looks back at how theory and research methods used in literacy studies have developed over the last 20 years and the particular contributions of this approach. She asks how the meanings of literacy and learning are changing in the context of global activities and population movements, new institutional arrangements and values, and the growing significance of digital literacies in everyday life. She argues that keeping the diversity of local literacies in view acts as an important counterweight to the functional skills based perspective of much contemporary policy.

Walled Gardens and Wide Open Spaces: Academic Writing in its Time and Place
Monday June 20, 2011, 4:30pm in the Community Room (1139), Faculty of Education

Abstract: Many aspects of academics’ working lives are changing rapidly. These include the use of digital communication, collaboration, interdisciplinary work; increased surveillance and control; monitoring of research output and intensifying workloads. In this session Mary shares data from a small project in the UK, showing how academics adapt their writing practices by using new technologies, spaces and time to create boundaries and manage the contradictory pressures under which they work. Her study reveals the richness of academics’ writing practices. It shows the value of looking at academic writing as a social practice as it reveals processes of change as they unfold. It also shows the significance of such things as the historical context, changing configurations of time and space and changing professional identities. It is significant because it challenges some received wisdom about academic writing.

Dr. Hamilton’s visit was generously supported by Research Western and the Graduate Program and Research Office, Faculty of Education, University of Western Ontario.