Scarlett Mannish

PhD student at the Department of Swedish Language and
Multilingualism, Stockholm University

My teaching experiences inspire my interest in research. After undergraduate studies in
Classics, I trained as a teacher in my home city, London. The provision of Classics in the UK
is fraught with debate around class, student background and the subject’s instrumental value on the increasingly crowded curriculum. These themes continued for me in my 9 years as a mother tongue teacher in Stockholm. I taught English to students aged between 5-19 in dozens of secondary schools and gymnasiums in Stockholm, alongside colleagues with over 70 different languages. My work underpinned my Master's research, focussing on identity and investment in learning English (a high status language) in mother tongue classrooms (a low status medium). In addition to this I co-authored an article about opportunities for student agency during distance learning and read a Magister in pedagogical leadership.

As a doctoral student I am researching Pierre Bourdieu, in particular his theories of cultural capital, habitus and field. With these as theoretical foundations my thesis aims to explore the power dynamic between English and other languages in Swedish secondary schools and the effect that the unspoken ubiquity of English has on provision of study guidance and language teaching, as well as multilingual students’ identities.

When I’m not being a massive nerd, I actually continue being a massive nerd. I read science fiction as part of a regular reading group, play saxophone badly, badminton well, and enjoy travelling.