Impact case study database

The Nuer people face difficult challenges in supporting literacy in their language. Although a writing system was developed in the mid-20th century, the phonological and morphological complexity of the language has posed significant challenges for codification, and it has never been fully standardised. Efforts to remedy the situation have effectively stalled within South Sudan, owing to ongoing unrest and lack of financial resources. Learning materials are minimal, inconsistent in terms of their alphabets and spelling conventions and difficult to access.

Our work with diaspora communities addresses these issues through language support activities and resources developed as a result of our phonological and morphological analyses of different Nuer dialects. The impact of our work is achieved through the provision of physical and digital resources, through facilitation of community outreach activities, and through speaker engagement with our online resources and community group.

Physical materials for heritage learners/Community workshops

Like many immigrant communities, Nuer in the diaspora include a growing body of heritage speakers whose contact with the language is restricted to the family environment. There is strong motivation in the community to promote social cohesion through mother tongue literacy, but the sorts of resources that might normally be used to support learning and teaching of a language are lacking. To advance community goals to actively maintain Nuer usage in the diaspora, we first took steps at a local level, during our collaboration with communities in Southern California and in Nebraska, both major centres for East African refugee resettlement in North America. We produced a booklet on writing and grammar, reflecting our analyses of the phonological and grammatical system [S1]. To be maximally inclusive, the booklet and accompanying workshop included discussion of dialectal differences identified in our research and proposed spelling reforms for the otherwise neglected West Nuer dialect. This was presented and discussed at three community workshops in 2018 held in San Diego (California), Lincoln and Omaha (Nebraska). A total of 130 community members participated in the workshops, where we distributed 280 copies of the booklet, which was designed to support both heritage learners and native speakers [S2]. The booklet is actively used in home instruction; in a recent call, John Kuek, psychologist at the La Maestra Community Health Center in San Diego and a prominent community organiser, told us “I have been teaching my kids. It's a very cool booklet you put together. It's very helpful, I'm telling you.”

Digital resources for the global Nuer community/Online engagement

A major outcome of our research was a sizeable corpus of fully-inflected nouns and verbs [S3] that has been optimised for the practical use of the Nuer community as the first searchable online Nuer-English dictionary. The website Nuer Lexicon was launched in September 2020 and by the end of 2020 had been visited by an average of 413 users per month in 63 countries worldwide, with the greatest activity recorded for three diaspora target groups in the USA, Kenya and UK. In this period South Sudan and Ethiopia were in the top 7 countries for bandwidth and hits [S4]. The site was launched with over 800 lexical items, exemplified by over 1,100 noun and verb paradigms and 1,400 audio recordings and examples. Users can search in Nuer and English and toggle between results in two modes, one aimed at Nuer speakers, rendered in our version of the practical orthography, and another aimed at linguists using transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet. The interactive interface allows users to reveal morphological patterns such as tone and vowel length alternations that are otherwise opaque to learners, since they are obscured by the writing system. The lexicon is designed to be an interactive and growing resource. Users are able to offer corrections to existing entries and to suggest new entries and example sentences. Up to the end of 2020, 103 new items were incorporated based on community suggestions, from speakers based in South Sudan, Kenya and the USA. To further facilitate community engagement, we have established a Facebook group (with 131 members by the end of 2020) as a forum for our Nuer beneficiaries to discuss norms, definitions and spelling conventions [S5]. If user engagement continues to confirm its value, we will engage with the authorities in South Sudan to expand its use to educational ends. Tanya Spronk, Literacy and Education Coordinator for the Summer Institute of Linguistics in Juba, South Sudan (the major promotor of literacy efforts in the country), writes “something like this dictionary could become a spelling authority […] there is still nothing else like it that I know of in any South Sudanese language!” [S6]. Jimma Guicwang, Nuer language interpreter for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and other NGOs, writes “Now, I will not be worry about where I will go for help or asking Nuer speakers to get the similar translations both English and Nuer vocabularies words because the Nuer Lexicon online dictionary will keep providing me the meaning words without difficulty.” [S7]. Besides its usefulness as a language resource, the lexicon has emerged as an expression of cultural pride, and user response has been enthusiastic, as one user commented: “I just wanted to say thank you to everyone that involved large and small to make this wonderful language and loving language accessible online to many millions of people around the GLOBE.”

New policies, standards and guidance in Europe

In 2015 the European Council Working Group on e-Law (e-Justice) was awarded funding by the European Directorate for Justice to prepare a detailed report on the state of the art of, and recommendations for, cross-border videoconferencing in legal proceedings. Based on work in the AVIDICUS projects, Braun was invited by the group to contribute a chapter on VMI to the report. The chapter outlines the challenges of VMI identified in the AVIDICUS research and provides recommendations. The report was then used to develop European Council Recommendation 2015/C 250/01 on ‘Promoting the use of and sharing of best practices on cross-border videoconferencing in the area of justice in the Member States and at EU level’ [S1]. Citing the outcomes of the AVIDICUS projects as a unique point of reference for VMI in legal settings, the document states that " [i]f interpreter support is required in a videoconference, the Member States should be aware of and to the extent possible follow the advice gained from the AVIDICUS projects."

The AVIDICUS research has also become a unique or major point of reference for VMI in other policy documents in the UK and internationally, including, for example, the Independent Review of Quality Arrangements under the Ministry of Justice Language Services Framework Agreement (2014) [S2]; The UN Refugee Agency Handbook for Interpreters in Asylum Procedures (2017) [S3]; the UK’s Institute of Translation and Interpreting Position Paper on Remote Interpreting (2019) [S4]; and the International Association of Conference Interpreters Guidance for Distance Interpreting (2019) [S5].

In 2018, based on her expertise in VMI, Braun was invited to join the German Standards Institute (DIN) Sub-Committee ‘Interpreting and Technologies’ and, as the only academic member with specific expertise in VMI, to co-chair the development of DIN 8578, the first standard for distance interpreting in consecutive mode worldwide [S6]. Furthermore, in 2020, Braun became an expert member of the ISO Ad-Hoc Group ‘Distance Interpreting’ (part of ISO/TC37 Language and Terminology, SC5, Translation and Interpreting).

Influencing practice and delivery of VMI services in Californian courts

California has the world’s largest trade union of legal interpreters, the California Federation of Interpreters (CFI) with ca. 1,000 members. From 2014, a debate on the use of VMI in Californian courts evolved between the CFI and California Judicial Council. Representing a member base that was largely sceptical of VMI, CFI extensively cited the AVIDICUS findings in position papers for the Judicial Council (e.g., **[S7]**) to support its argument that caution needs to be exercised when VMI is used in courts. Findings that were specifically highlighted included those outlined in [R1] and [R2], i.e., the earlier onset of fatigue in VMI compared to on-site interpreting, increased stress perceived by interpreters in video links, the impact on interpreting quality and, ultimately, the efficiency and fairness of justice.

In addition to the CFI, the Judicial Council’s Joint Working Group for California’s Language Access Plan (LAP) also referenced the AVIDICUS research (e.g., in the ‘Strategic Plan for Language Access in the California Courts’, which it submitted to the Judicial Council in 2015 **[S8]**). Whilst striking a more positive note about VMI than the CFI, the group also recommended that, based on the AVIDICUS findings, caution should be exercised in its implementation. Specifically, the LAP recommended that the Judicial Council conduct a VMI pilot project. During this project, Braun received invitations both from the CFI (2016, 2017) and the Judicial Council (2017) to explain her research findings and to deliver training to professional interpreters (see below). Braun’s findings and recommendations were further highlighted in the final evaluation report of the pilot project in 2018 [S9], which in turn formed the basis for the development of California courts’ official guidelines on VMI.

Building capacity for VMI among policy stakeholders and users

Based on the above research, Braun and Davitti have regularly delivered training sessions to a) professional interpreters – workshops delivered, for example, through the Institute of Translators and Interpreters (2015), the California Federation of Interpreters (2016, 2017), the European SHIFT project (2018), the Chartered Institute of Linguists (2019), and b) interpreting students from different institutions – e.g., Alicante University (2016), SHIFT project Summer School in Forli (2018); Leicester University Summer School (2018) [S10].

Braun’s expertise has led to numerous invitations to provide expert advice on VMI to policy stakeholders, police forces and legal professionals (e.g., Ministry of Justice 2014, 2015; Cambridgeshire/Hertfordshire/Leicestershire Police, 2016; HM Courts and Tribunal Services (HMCTS) 2017, 2018), write for professional magazines (German Translator and Interpreter Association ATICOM, UK Institute of Translation and Interpreting) and contribute to events for non-academic audiences (e.g., Healthcare interpreting symposium, Austria, 2014; E-protocol conference for representatives from all Ministries of Justice in the EU, Poland, 2015; California Federation of Interpreters Conference, US, 2016; California Executive Court Tour and Cisco workshop, US, 2017) [S10].

In 2018-20, Braun was commissioned together with Prof N Fielding (Sociology, Surrey) by the Office of the Sussex Police and Crime Commissioner to conduct an independent evaluation of the Video-Enabled Justice programme run by Sussex Police. In April 2020, Braun provided input to an HMCTS-led evaluation of video courts emerging as a result of the Covid-19 outbreak.

The two principal impact strands detailed below are the result of a key finding that emerged from the above research: that cartonera publishing, beyond the dissemination of texts in and by vulnerable communities, offers hands-on, arts-based methodologies that are at once sustainable and socially-transformative. The first strand involved the design and implementation of tailored SDG-focused programmes to empower vulnerable communities to write, publish and change their life stories, while the second sought to increase the global reach of cartonera publishing through high-profile, international events and collections.

Strand 1: Empowering marginalised communities through cartonera-inspired workshops

Working closely with four principal cartonera partners on the ground – La Rueda Cartonera and La Cartonera in Mexico; Dulcinéia Catadora and Catapoesia in Brazil – the research team co-designed sustainable cartonera programmes to empower communities facing exclusion, stigma and violence ( IR1). The resulting workshops have been delivered to 1,000+ participants from a wide variety of vulnerable groups (many of which do not feature below for reasons of space), from marginalized rural and indigenous communities to homeless groups and imprisoned people ( IR2). We highlight three examples below to illustrate the significance and range of the impacts achieved by these programmes.

Building on their existing work in the Cerrado, a Brazilian biome threatened by mining and deforestation, Catapoesia have reached 200+ participants through a new series of 13 community workshops. The programme brought community groups together to discuss and try out more sustainable forms of working through closer, more respectful connections with the natural environment. e.g. In Riacho dos Ventos – a quilombola community originally established by escaped slaves – a group of female leaf-pickers produced Buriti-Dão, a book reflecting on life in the Cerrado. Through the collective process of making the book – discussions, writing sessions, book-making activities and book fairs – the women learnt new ways of telling their stories, forging community and making a living ( IR3). As Luciana reflects, “We saw the possibility of making money by selling books to supplement our income. We love the project and we have even set up a mini version of Catapoesia in our community.”

In the mega-city of São Paulo, the cartonera team co-designed a new intervention with 18 homeless people and housing activists, entitled Mutirão (Task Force). The intervention focused on improving conditions in a housing occupation through DIY teamwork that was documented and disseminated through a cartonera book with the same title. As attested by Lúcia Rosa, co-founder of Dulcinéia, who co-ran the workshops, “Mutirão is a book that exposes the very serious problem of homelessness and inequality [in São Paulo].” But it was also a social project that had a direct impact, “bringing huge benefits to the quality of life of residents”. As Stefania explains: “My room was painted. I also helped to paint it. It looked good. And there’s going to be a photo of it in the book. The covers are very colourful and it’s easy to make the books. I want people to have this book and to see that people who don’t own property also have the right to decent housing.” ( IR2)

5,000 miles away in Jalisco (Mexico), the CPP team supported La Rueda Cartonera and Viento Cartonero to take their long-established publishing activities to a prison for the first time, running a series of workshops for imprisoned women with the aim of contributing to their rehabilitation. These resulted in a double launch: Wind & Mirrors, a book written by nine participants; Bote Cartonero (Cartonera in the Clink), Mexico’s first publisher run by prisoners themselves. The impact on the prisoners was powerful, enabling them not only to use literature to combat stigma and “denounce injustices” (Enedina), but also to begin rewriting their storylines and take control of their own futures. As testimonials and news reports demonstrate, the non-prescriptive, creative aspect of the programme allowed prisoners to come to their own understanding of what literature could do for them, whether as “a new way of coping with life” after several suicide attempts (Sonia) or as a means of finding creative freedom: “this cartonera project is a blessing!!! Thanks to literature, to travelling in writing, I no longer feel oppressed by this system. Literature liberates me!” (Erika) ( IR2 & IR4). These stories of transformation, documented in the new BBC Arts animation “Writing from the Shadows” ( IR5), inspired the first UK cartonera programme, launched in September 2019 at HMP Nottingham, resulting in Unlocked, a literary collection written and produced by 17 imprisoned men. Of these participants, 100% reported that they enjoyed the experience of making their own books and writing their stories, and over 80% noted an improvement in their literacy and communication skills. The success of these programmes has inspired the new, Surrey-led “Prisoner Publishing” project (2020-21), part-funded by Jalisco’s Ministry of Culture, which is extending the impact of these programmes across the UK, Mexico and South America.

Strand 2: Curating and activating cultural heritage from the Latin American margins

Our international cartonera exhibition in São Paulo (Oct 2018–Feb 2019) was the largest to date, featuring 350 books from 40 collectives from all over the world, and attracting 2,500+ visitors from a range of socio-economic backgrounds, countries and ethnicities. It received high-level media coverage, from a review in Brazil's largest circulation magazine Veja (circulation: 1 million), to a feature on national TV programme Journal de Culture (audience: 4.8 million) ( IR6). The community cultural centre Casa do Povo was chosen as a venue to help achieve our three goals: equip the public with new knowledge of grassroots publishing in Latin America; increase the accessibility of literary publishing; inspire and train visitors to make their own cartonera books and (in the case of teachers, writers and artists) develop new professional practices. The comments book demonstrates all of these impacts: “Lost for words! You have showed us how to do so many things without the need for anything too complicated”; “I learnt all about cartoneras. It immediately inspired me to develop something similar for my students at the state high school where I teach.” ( IR7)

The public programme led by São Paulo-based activists, writers and educators also fostered some surprising new initiatives, including a productive collaboration between Dulcinéia and three groups of immigrant and LGBTQ women, which led to the production of a high-impact book – We are Women Immigrants – which folds out into a protest placard. Generated through a series of face-to-face workshops and digital exchanges, the book/placard was placed in action at the 2019 Women’s March (see image and quotation below).

*People were curious, they asked questions, and we answered, starting various conversations throughout the day. ‘Ah, how did you make this?’ they asked, and not just about the content but also about the process, like, ‘how was the book made?’ We chatted with so many people. It was a fruitful process of knowledge exchange…. The book generated the effect that we wanted, to spark curiosity: ‘Ah, what? It’s a placard that turns into a book? I want one!’ (Maria Botero, public programme collaborator)

‘No Woman is Illegal’ placard presiding over the Women’s Day Demonstration, São Paulo, 8th March 2019. Photograph courtesy of Amanda Amorim.

In the UK, Bell has forged new collaborations with the British Library, Senate House Library, and Cambridge University Library, leading to the development of the world’s second-largest cartonera collection, an open, ever-growing archive of 700+ books. The libraries have benefited in three main ways: acquiring these difficult-to-attain books, co-developing new collecting practices, and attracting new readerships. Most notably, the project has allowed partner libraries to “promote a more activist and decolonial culture within our libraries, whereby collections are developed in collaboration with grassroots collectives and vulnerable communities from the Global South” ( IR8). This shift has resulted in further impact for the CPP, leading for example to the first public cartonera collection in Mexico (at Jalisco Central Library) supported by these three libraries.

To activate these collections, the Surrey-led team coordinated a series of digital resources (e.g. a feature on cartoneras in “ Rebel, Rebel”, an episode from the British Library’s “Anything But Silent” podcast) and designed a series of public engagement events that together have involved 1,000+ participants ( IR9), culminating in the first London Cartonera Book Festival (17–20 September 2019, SHL & BL). The festival’s SDG-focused workshops allowed participants from a range of organizations (e.g. Save the Latin Village Campaign, Latin American Women’s Aid and Amnesty International) to adapt and adopt the Latin American publishing model to strengthen their own community initiatives ( IR10). The project team has also taken cartonera activities beyond libraries through high-profile festivals including Hay Festival 2018, where our two workshops led to new community initiatives led by local artists, and a month-long series of further workshops run independently by local teenagers at the Story of Books ‘working museum’, which attracted 200+ participants.

The research outlined in Section 2 has led to three strands of impact, all of which draw on Dippold’s language-led approach which perceives of communication as a dynamic and negotiated phenomenon.

1. Enhancing intercultural understanding and effectiveness of professionals

Dippold’s experiential training model, implemented in the Futurelearn MOOC “Communicating with Diverse Audiences”, has enhanced the intercultural understanding and effectiveness of professionals in a wide range of fields, including most prominently Business, Consulting and Management, the Public Sector, and Teaching and Education [S1]. The MOOC implements Dippold’s experiential approach using role-plays education materials that inspire reflection on the nuances of individual language use. It has had a global reach, having been joined by approximately 7,080 individuals in 153 countries, including many developing nations [S2]. For its public launch in January 2020, the course was selected by the British Council for its ‘Study UK’ campaign and it also featured in the new campaign starting in October 2020.

The MOOC has received reviews of an average of 4.7/5, with no ratings under 4 to date (8/10/2020). In the Futurelearn course survey [S3], more than 90% of participants said that they had acquired new skills or knowledge by taking the course and approximately 60 percent of respondents reported that they had applied what they had learned, or had passed on what they had learned, to others. The course has also generated income for the University through certificate sales of approximately £1,068 up to 31 October 2020.

Participants’ commenting on the ‘impact on practice’ survey [S1] and on learning steps within the course [S4] said that role-play examples and reflection tools, had allowed them to develop strategies for communicating more effectively with speakers from a wide range of cultural and professional backgrounds and enabled them to make informed decisions about their communication practices: *“ I am planning to use the self-evaluation and planning tool to develop my communication skills at work and with others”* [S1].

Participants also describe how the course had encouraged them to reflect on their own language use, how it enabled them to plan more effective communicative strategies and how it inspired them to critically evaluate processes in the interest of fairness and equality. For example, one learner said that the course would help them to design a fairer interview process: “ I work for a crafts charity […]. I find it difficult to interview non-native speakers as the other panellists don’t seem to want to listen or adapt their language to them […]. We could have missed out on some great Makers because of the language barrier, I think this course will make me a better interviewer in those cases but now I just need the confidence to speak up. I will be bringing the tools with me and reflecting on our interview process.” [S1]

2. Influencing the design and delivery of intercultural training curricula

Dippold’s approach, conveyed through the MOOC and a Society for Intercultural Education Training and Research (SIETAR) workshop in London in March 2019 which was attended by more than 20 participants with a background in intercultural training / coaching and English Language teaching [S5], has influenced the design and delivery of intercultural training curricula. For example, intercultural trainer Jo Bloxham, an attendee at the SIETAR workshop, began concorporating some of the materials into training sessions delivered to her clients to support them in reflecting on what helps and hinders communication. She has so far deployed the materials with approximately 120 participants. Dippold’s work provided Bloxham with the evidence base for a shift from essentialist approaches, which are perceived with growing discomfort by some teachers, towards language-based approaches to intercultural communication [S6a]. Similarly, language coach Ana Sanchez (Madrid) used Dippold’s MOOC to provide the theoretical underpinning for her teaching approach. She found that her enabling focus on ‘fluency and communicative efficiency’ was well-supported by the MOOC [S6b].

Teachers and intercultural trainers and coaches participating in the MOOC praised the value of the reflective approach and the education materials featured within the course, such as the tools aiding planning of interactions for teaching and coaching practice. For example, one participant commented that *“ I have suggested improvements to our cultural understanding training so will put forward new ideas created from this course whilst developing the replacement course. Step back from awareness, have an action plan for how to do this in general etc”* [S1].

John Twitchin, Director of the influential BBC ‘Crosstalk’ series [CROSSTALK. John Twitchin (Director), BBC 1979], which in 1979 first discussed issues in interracial relationships from a communication perspective, has confirmed that Dippold’s work has added an important new angle to a language-led approach to intercultural communication, inciting reflection on the status of different varieties of English and of how personal language use may contribute to (in)equality [S7].

Based on her research and expertise in intercultural communication training, Doris was invited to speak as an expert at a House of Lords roundtable on ‘Language skills and intercultural understanding for UK businesses working with China’. Dippold argued that learning a language to a level which allows for fluent communication is not realistic in all circumstances and should thus be replaced with training for communication through English as a lingua franca which includes awareness of individual communicative practices and their consequences. The advice was heard by several influential professionals and policymakers, including the Chinese Embassy, the Department of International Trade, the China-Britain Business Council and Industry representatives, including HSBC and Eversheds [S8].

3. Enhancing the design of a digital sales chatbot

In the summer of 2019, Dippold was invited by local SME AMO (Account Management Online Limited) to support them in enhancing the design of their AI driven, automated marketing chatbot to improve customer engagement, enjoyment and trust. In collaboration with Lynden, a psychologist, Dippold developed a new analytical approach drawing on interactional sociolinguistics to derive recommendations for new prompt:response patterns.

AMO used these recommendations to implement product design changes to their commercial chatbot by authoring new prompt:response turns which optimise customer trust and engagement, confirming that *“ critical to the dialogue management strategy is the use of face and politeness theory that was introduced to us during our collaboration”* [S9]. In addition, Dippold and Lynden’s recommendations have informed the redesign of AMO’s chatbot interface which now allows user-initiated questions and clarification requests. These design changes represent a significant step-change compared to competitor technologies. In addition, this work has subsequently also supported a successful application for new investment funding from Innovate UK (£300,000) with the help of the “ refined conversation patterns presented in our application.” [S9]*

AMO’s new bot, which uses the design changes to conversation patterns proposed by Dippold and Lynden, has been deployed to other companies, including a packaging solutions company and the SETSquared partnership. The SETSquared Operations and Relationship Manager has reported that the deployment of an effective bot has been successful in qualifying out investors and/or companies who do not fit the investment club’s criteria, saving vital time in the process [S10].