How languages make us: explorations through performance

How does language shape our sense of self? And does being multilingual change the way we think?

Join us for a lively evening of talks, poetry and songs celebrating the UK’s rich linguistic cultures and communities.

Through multilingual performances – from BSL poetry to Caneuon Cymraeg (Welsh songs) – and short talks by leading researchers, we will explore how language shapes our identities, how it connects communities and why learning languages matters for a more inclusive world.

Speakers

Professor Robert Dunbar

Robert Dunbar is Chair of Celtic Languages, Literature, History and Antiquities at the University of Edinburgh. He is a member of the Committee of Experts of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, and of Bòrd na Gàidhlig, which oversees Gaelic policy in Scotland. He has advised international organisations, governments and legislative bodies, and non-governmental organisations on the protection and promotion of minority languages.

Professor Devyani Sharma FBA

Devyani Sharma is Professor of Language and Communication at the University of Oxford. She studies accents, dialects, migration, attitudes, and bilingualism. She has conducted research across London and in postcolonial settings, and has worked with the Sutton Trust, the BBC, and corporate and government organisations on language in the workplace. She was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2023.

Professor Bencie Woll FBA

Bencie Woll is Honorary Professor of Sign Language and Deaf Studies at University College London. She is a linguist by training and has been involved in research on sign language for nearly 40 years. Her research embraces a wide range of topics related to sign language, including the linguistics of British Sign Language (BSL) and other sign languages, the history and sociolinguistics of BSL and the Deaf community, the development of BSL in young children, sign language and the brain, and end-to-end machine translation between BSL and English. She was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2012 and in 2024 received an MBE for Services to Higher Education and Deaf People.

Performers

Zoë McWhinney

Zoë McWhinney is a BSL poet and Visual Vernacular performer based in Southeast London. Born to a Deaf Northern Irish father and a Belgian-Finnish CODA (Child of Deaf Adults) mother, Zoë grew up immersed in the sign language community alongside her three Deaf/Hard of Hearing (HoH) brothers. She has performed at renowned venues such as The Roundhouse and the United Nations in Geneva and made history as the first Deaf poet published in British Sign Language in Modern Poetry and Translation magazine. She was runner up BSL poet laureate for 2023-2024 and again for 2025-2026, nominated for Forward poetry prize in Performance category for The Portrait and The Skylight and consulted for the Royal Shakespeare Company on BSL. She wrote for Dead Centre’s stage adaption of Ilya Kaminsky’s Deaf Republic shown at the Royal Court and Dublin Theatre Festival.

Plus more to be announced.

Chair

Professor Charles Forsdick FBA

Charles Forsdick is Drapers Professor of French and a Fellow of Murray Edwards College at the University of Cambridge. He completed a PhD at Lancaster on the author, traveller and naval doctor Victor Segalen, under the supervision of Dr David Steel. Following his first post as Lecturer in French at the University of Glasgow, he moved to the James Barrow Chair of French at the University of Liverpool in 2001, a post he held until his move to Cambridge in 2023. His research interests include Francophone postcolonial studies, particularly postcolonial literature; French colonial history (including Haiti); the transatlantic traffic in enslaved Africans; travel writing and exoticism; translation studies; world literature and graphic fiction. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2021 and is currently the Lead Fellow for Languages.

Event schedule:

• Doors and bar open: 18:00
• Event starts: 18:30
• Event ends: 20:00
• Bar closes: 20:30

Further information

Free event, donations welcome, booking required.

As tickets are free, people sometimes book and don't attend, so we have to issue more tickets than there are seats available to allow for this. Entry into this event is on a first-come, first-served basis and we recommend arriving in good time to avoid any disappointment.

Registering for a ticket does not guarantee you entrance to the SHAPE Room. If the SHAPE Room reaches capacity, you will be directed to the Wohl Gallery next door to watch a live stream of the event.

This event will also be recorded and live streamed on YouTube.

This event has live subtitles delivered by 121 Captions. This event also has BSL interpretation.

To help plan your visit, please visit the Accessibility at the British Academy page.

For any additional questions or specific access requirements, attendees are invited to contact the Events team at events@thebritishacademy.ac.uk

If you have any questions about this event, please refer to our Public Events FAQs. If your question is not answered, please email events@thebritishacademy.ac.uk

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