Jane Wilkinson
jane wilkinson

Dr Jane Wilkinson

Lecturer

Biography

I joined the Tourism and Intercultural Business Communication group within the Business School at Âé¶¹ÉçÇø as Lecturer in Intercultural Business Communication in January 2019 and was Programme Leader for the BA (Hons) in Languages and Intercultural Communication from August 2019 until July 2024. I am now Programme Leader for the new BA (Hons) Intercultural Business Communication and Marketing / Tourism Management programmes. I previously worked at the universities of Leeds, Aberystwyth and Lancaster after completing a PhD in German Studies at the University of Glasgow.

My research interests and expertise lie in the broad areas of border studies, migration and intercultural communication, and I am currently working on the following projects:
- 'Creating cross-border communities: The European Capital of Culture 2022, Esch-sur-Alzette' explores the representation and creation of place, sense of place and cross-border community in some of the participatory, 'grassroots' projects and events featured in the Capital of Culture programme. I am particularly interested in multilingual events, including theatre productions, which focus on the border between Luxembourg and France and on expressions and constructions of local, regional, national and 'European' identities.
- 'Representations of Migration and 'Post-Migration' in Recent German-Language Drama', explores thematic and aesthetic responses to migration to and settlement in (West) Germany and Austria from the 1960s to the current day. Using theories of borders and hospitality, I look at dramatic and theatrical engagement with both the 'guest worker' era of temporary labour migration in the 1960s and 1970s, which led to the long-term settlement of many people from southern Europe and north Africa, and the more recent arrival of refugees from Africa and the Middle East.

In May 2023, I worked with colleagues in Intercultural Communication to organise the international research symposium 'Imagining and Experiencing Hospitalities in a Mobile World' at Edinburgh Napier. This symposium featured a range of papers exploring the intersections between 'hospitalities' and 'interculturalities' in diverse contexts, including migration and asylum, internationalisation of Higher Education, and tourism.

I am currently supervising 4 PhD students working on interculturality, mindfulness and migration; translation markets in the UK and the EU; students' reverse intercultural adaptation in Chinese universities; and translation of intangible cultural heritage texts in China.

As well as being Programme Leader for the undergraduate Intercultural Business Communication programmes, I lead and teach on both undergraduate and postgraduate modules in intercultural communication.

I am a member of the International Association for Languages and Intercultural Communication (IALIC) and of Edinburgh Napier's Mobilities and Movement Research Network (MMRN).

I am a fellow of the HEA.

Esteem

Conference Organising Activity

  • Lead organiser: Imagining and Experiencing Hospitalities in a Mobile World, Âé¶¹ÉçÇø, May 2023
  • Co-organiser of research symposium: Interculturality in a Precarious Future, University of Leeds, October 2018
  • Co-organiser of international conference: Travelling Languages: Culture, Communication and Translation in a Mobile World, 10th Annual Conference of the International Association for Languages and Intercultural Communication, University of Leeds / Leeds Beckett University, December 2010
  • Organiser of research symposium: The Intercultural Writer, University of Leeds, October 2009
  • Programme Committee Member: The Intercultural Narrative, 4th annual conference of the Association for Languages and Intercultural Communication, University of Lancaster, December 2003.
  • Programme Committee Member: The Transcultured Self: Experiencing Languages and Intercultural Communication, 3rd annual conference of the International Association for Languages and Intercultural Communication, Johannes Kepler University, Linz, Austria, December 2002

 

Editorial Activity

  • Co-editor with John O'Regan and Mike Robinson of Special Issue of Language and Intercultural Communication: 'Travelling Languages: Culture, Communication and Translation in a Mobile World' (2011) and book version published by Routledge (2014)
  • Editorial Board Member for the Journal of Language and Intercultural Communication (2007-2017)

 

External Examining/Validations

  • External examiner for undergraduate and postgraduate modules and programmes in Luxembourg Studies, University of Sheffield
  • External examiner for undergraduate and postgraduate modules and programmes in German at Aberystwyth University

 

Fellowships and Awards

  • Fellow of the HEA

 

Grant Reviewer

  • Grant Reviewer for DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service)
  • Grant Reviewer for the FNR - Luxembourg National Research Fund
  • Grant Reviewer for the GACR - Czech Science Foundation

 

Invited Speaker

  • Symposium talk: 'Rewriting(s) in Post-Migrant Theatre' - invited talk at symposium on 'Post-Migrant Theatre in / from Germany' at the University of Edinburgh, May 2015
  • Seminar Speaker: Constructing the German-Polish Borderland as Transnational Space in Literature and Theatre, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, March 2010
  • Symposium talk: The Intercultural Speaker as Border Crosser, The Intercultural Speaker, 1st IALIC research symposium, Âé¶¹ÉçÇø, June 2009
  • Seminar speaker: Theatrical Negotiations of the German-Polish Border, Aberystwyth University, March 2009
  • Seminar Speaker: Cultural Crossings at Germany's Eastern Border, University of Bath, July 2008

 

Membership of Professional Body

  • Co-Chair of the International Association for Languages and Intercultural Communication 2008-2010
  • Member of the Association of Borderland Studies
  • Member of Women in German Studies
  • Member of the International Association for Languages and Intercultural communication

 

Public/Community Engagement

  • Community Engagement: Intercultural activities to support the work of third sector organisation Forth Valley Welcome, Sanctuary for Refugees in the Heart of Scotland
  • Invited panel speaker following performance of Brecht's Mother Courage at West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, October 2018
  • Public Lecture: Shifting Borders in a Changing Europe, University of Wisconsin, Madison, March 2010
  • Community Engagement: 'Borderlines' - collaborating with West Yorkshire Playhouse (Leeds) and Theater an der Parkaue (Berlin) to run theatre workshops for young people

 

Research Degree External Examining

  • External Examiner for MPhil on 'Foreign Language Anxiety and its Effect on Language Ego and Performance', Kayleigh Rippingale, Aberystwyth University
  • External Examiner for PhD 'Representations of Germany and its people in Maltese GFL learning contexts', George Cremona, Institute of Education, University College London

 

Reviewing

  • Book Proposal Reviewer for Routledge Handbooks Series
  • Journal Reviewer for Edinburgh German Yearbook
  • Journal Reviewer for Journal of Multicultural Discourses
  • Journal Reviewer for German Politics and Âé¶¹ÉçÇø
  • Journal Reviewer for the German Quarterly
  • Journal Reviewer for the Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change
  • Regular Journal Reviewer for the Journal of Language and Intercultural Communication

 

Date


31 results

Travelling Languages: Culture, Communication and Translation in a Mobile World

Book
(2014)
Travelling Languages: Culture, Communication and Translation in a Mobile World
Based on the commonly held assumption that we now live in a world that is ‘on the move’, with growing opportunities for both real and virtual travel and the blurring of bounda...

Representing (Post-)Migrant Experience in Recent German-language Drama: The Semi-Documentary Monologues Shadow Voices and Illegal

Presentation / Conference
Wilkinson, J. (2013, October)
Representing (Post-)Migrant Experience in Recent German-language Drama: The Semi-Documentary Monologues Shadow Voices and Illegal. Paper presented at Crossroads: Europe, Migration and Culture

The Intercultural Speaker and the Acquisition of Intercultural/Global Competence

Book Chapter
Wilkinson, J. (2012)
The Intercultural Speaker and the Acquisition of Intercultural/Global Competence. In The Routledge Handbook of Language and Intercultural Communication, 296-309. Routledge

In the Border's Shadow: The 'Imperceptible' Migrant in Turkish-German Drama

Presentation / Conference
Wilkinson, J. (2012, December)
In the Border's Shadow: The 'Imperceptible' Migrant in Turkish-German Drama. Paper presented at New Borderlands or Cosmopolitanism from Below?

Travelling languages: culture, communication and translation in a mobile world

Journal Article
O'Regan, J., Wilkinson, J., & Robinson, M. (2011)
Travelling languages: culture, communication and translation in a mobile world. Language and Intercultural Communication, 11(4), 299-303. https://doi.org/10.1080/14708477.2011.616693

Discrepant Narratives: The Impact of Transborder Theatre Festivals on Communities at the German-Polish Border

Book Chapter
Wilkinson, J. (2010)
Discrepant Narratives: The Impact of Transborder Theatre Festivals on Communities at the German-Polish Border. In Cultural Impact in the German Contact: Studies in Transmission, Reception and Influence, 188-209. Camden House

European Borderlands as Multilingual Spaces: Representing "Old" and "New" Schengen

Presentation / Conference
Wilkinson, J., & Horner, K. (2010, April)
European Borderlands as Multilingual Spaces: Representing "Old" and "New" Schengen. Paper presented at New Challenges for Multilingualism in Europe

Shifting Borders in a Changing Europe - Public Lecture

Presentation / Conference
Wilkinson, J., & Horner, K. (2010, March)
Shifting Borders in a Changing Europe - Public Lecture

Constructing the German-Polish Borderland as Transnational Space in Literature and Theatre

Presentation / Conference
Wilkinson, J. (2010, March)
Constructing the German-Polish Borderland as Transnational Space in Literature and Theatre. Paper presented at Representing and Experiencing Transnationalism: Germanic Languages and Cultures in Global Perspective

Staging Liminality in the German-Polish-Czech Borderland: The Trinational Theatre Production Dreiland

Journal Article
Wilkinson, J. (2010)
Staging Liminality in the German-Polish-Czech Borderland: The Trinational Theatre Production Dreiland. German Life and Letters, 63(1), 88-104. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0483.2009.01484.x
In official European political discourse, borderlands, particularly those between old and new EU Member States, are positioned as ‘meeting spaces’ in which the idea of a unifi...

Current Post Grad projects

Non-Napier PhD or MSc by Research supervisions

  • PhD Student, Jade Douglas: Reclaiming the Local and Person(al) in Memory: The Articulation of Traumatic Legacies in Minority German-Language Literature, University of Leeds, funded by White Rose College of the Arts and Humanities
  • PhD student, Richard Boffey: 'Fixpünkte des "antitotalitären Konsenses"? The Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen memorials, Germany's "double past", and cultural memory in the Berlin Republic’, University of Leeds, funded by AHRC
  • MA by Research student, Richard Boffey: Germany's 'Âé¶¹ÉçÇø Past' and Cultural Memory in the Berlin Republic
  • Phd Student, Anja Henebury: ‘Engagement and authenticity: Poetics and politics in the late works of Martin Walser and Gunter Grass’, University of Leeds