The Visual and Multimodal Research Forum is a student run platform for academic discussion on multimodality and open to all postgraduate research students and other researchers at UCL Institute of Education and elsewhere. Participation is free. Please contact Sophia Diamantopoulou, Forum Coordinator, at sdiamantopoulou@ioe.ac.uk for any queries.

Date: Thursday 14th of April, 5:00-6:30 pm

Venue: UCL Knowledge Lab, 23-29 Emerald Street, WC1N 3QS

Work-in-progress seminar: Can multimodal analysis help us to understand superdiversity in place?

Dr Elisabetta Adami, University Academic Fellow in Multimodal Communication, University of Leeds

In this seminar I will discuss how I am using a social semiotic approach to conduct a multimodal analysis of (super)diversity in Kirkgate Market – a large socially and ethnically diverse indoor market in Leeds city centre, currently undergoing rapid changes due to redevelopment plans in the area. I am studying it as part of the project “Leeds Voices: Communicating Superdiversity in the Market” (funded by British Academy/Leverhulme Trust). I am looking at signs of diversity as expressed in the market place through font, writing, colour, display/layout, objects, and image. Drawing on the work of Scollon & Scollon (2003) in their book Discourses in Place, I am setting out to develop a multimodal mapping of the place in order to understand:

(1)    how socio-cultural diversity shapes the experience of the place, and

(2)    how diverse people’s activities shape the environment that they inhabit.

Please come along, engage with these emerging ideas and join the discussion.