(In)congruous plural identities in speakers of heritage languages

A PROLang event organised by BA year 2 students at UCL SSEES.

Join us for a rare and insightful event organized by BA year 2 students at SSEES. This event will present the conclusions and reflections following a UCL Changemakers project carried out in 2025, on heritage languages, identities, communities and stereotypes.

Rares and Maria, together with their Romanian language lecturer, carried out in-person and online research with major museums in London, to discover how they represent Romanian heritage.

Together with a fellow student, Toby, they followed up with an ethnographic trip to a Romanian community in London where they documented the changes of this community over the past 10-15 years.

The event will dwell on issues of plural identities, the ‘tug-of-war' - like connections between them and ways to reconcile them. The presenters will share their own personal encounters

regarding these matters, reflecting not only on the development of the project, but also on how they’ve dealt with their own experiences growing-up bilingual, experiences which many other multilingual speakers in the UK will relate to.

This presentation will be very relevant to students of languages, history, anthropology, museum studies, cultural heritage, arts, archaeology, politics, sociology geography and everyone else who relates to the topic or is a heritage or multilingual speaker.

We will serve Romanian nibbles and wine after the event.

All welcome!

Presenters

Maria Popa BA Comparative Literature and Romanian

Rares Muscar BA Sociology and Politics with Romanian

Toby Battersby BA Romanian and Russian

Ramona Gonczol Associate Professor Romanian Language