Dr Vera Castiglione

I am Deputy Language Director for Italian. I design, shape and coordinate language units on both the BA and the UWLP programmes.

I am also Engagement Opportunities Champion for the School of Modern Languages, leading on a number of extracurricular and community initiatives with an emphasis on intercultural communication and global citizenship.

As a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy I am a committed member of the teaching and learning scholarly community and I carry out research on intercultural projects, student engagement and critical pedagogy.

Finally, I am passionate about promoting equality and inclusion at all levels and contribute actively to the Widening Participation strategy.

Research

I carry out research in the field of student engagement, global citizenship and intercultural communication. I promote good practice and foster collaboration amongst different institutions. I co-organise the GW4-Lang colloquium, an annual conference on language teaching innovation in Higher Education encouraging cross-language collaboration amongst language teachers from the universities of Bristol, Bath, Cardiff and Exeter.  

In service to the wider international language teaching community, in 2017 I became honorary member of the scientific committee of XVIII Congreso internacional de la Sociedad Española de la Lengua y la Literatura.

My scholarly activity is informed by a firm belief in an evidence-based approach to teaching, self-reflection and insights from critical pedagogy.