UNIVERZITET U TUZLI

Of interest to anyone?

The University of Southampton is carrying out a research project on foreign languages and peacekeeping in Bosnia-Herzegovina and would like to hear from present or former interpreters/ translators/ language assistants who were employed by UNPROFOR/IFOR/ SFOR, particularly between 1995 and 2000. We are aiming to collect oral histories of interpreters' experiences at all levels and to understand how language policy affects practice on the ground.

The study is part of a three-year project called 'Languages at War: Policies and Practices of Language Contacts in Conflict', funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council. Our project partners are the University of Reading (who are doing a parallel study on languages and the liberation and occupation of western Europe 1944-47) and the Imperial War Museum in London.
Participants may choose to contribute their interview to the IWM sound archive if they would like, but this is not a condition of participation.

I will be visiting Bosnia-Herzegovina in 2010 to do oral history interviews and I would be very grateful to hear from anyone who might like to take part.
Please contact me on c.baker@soton. ac.uk - and feel free to pass this message on to anyone else who might be interested as well. (If you're no longer based in BiH, please get in touch anyway - it's possible for me to arrange visits to other places as well.) I'm happy to do interviews in English or BCS.

We have also interviewed a number of peacekeepers and language trainers from NATO countries during the first phase of the project (in 2009). Although we are focusing on the experiences of local employees this year, we would still
be keen to hear from members of the peacekeeping force (whether or not they worked as linguists themselves) or language instructors who would like to take part in an interview.

For more information about the project, please visit http://www.reading. ac.uk/languages-at-war/
or send me an email.