ABSTRACT. We will host a pre-conference half-day afternoon workshop on July 1. The workshop aims to discuss 19 proposals focused on research about writing in higher education in Europe. By research, we mean a project with a focused research question, an identified methodology (qualitative, quantitative, ethnographic, historical, discourse analysis, corpus, etc), and the collection of data in some form. The research activities are at different stages and frequently far from final.

We know that researchers around the world are interested in finding sites for serious cross-national, extended conversation that includes multiple research traditions. This workshop is therefore designed to make space available for extended time to read, process, think through, and discuss in detail each other’s work. We hope it also prepares participants for the international conversation during the conference.

Since we inhabit many roles of differing discursive power across complex, multiple linguistic, institutional, political, geographic, theoretical and pedagogical spaces, it is our experience that the dialogue informed by reading our projects irrespective of what stage they are at permits us to get rich feedback on our own projects-in-process, as well as work to understand each other’s work through its unique institutional, cultural, and political contexts. The workshop also provides a chance to perform as a community, encouraging collective reflection on the nature and status of higher education writing research more broadly, and sponsoring collaboration as a network of writing scholars across these contexts.

We want to engage researcher-participants from many countries and research traditions in an equal exchange dialogue, learning from each other: the primary focus is on the writing research itself. The research can be focused on teaching or studying writing in any language. The projects in the workshop are “international” in the sense that they offer sufficient contextualisation for participants to relate to them in view of the fact we all work in very different higher education systems.

ABSTRACT. One of the objective of COST Action 15221 – We ReLaTe - Advancing effective institutional models towards cohesive teaching, learning, research and writing development is ‘to co-ordinate the identification of existing centralised models which aim to support teaching, learning, research and writing in higher education with particular regard to their place institutionally and their existing interconnectedness/interoperability’. Within our Action we have agreed that one of the ways that we will address this objective is to publish a book of case studies which captures the existing models of support across some of our partner institutions. In the Action we are seeking to learn from existing success that is conspicuous at individual level and is demonstrated by key informants or stellar colleagues. Hence, the case studies will explore the institutional models through an individual lens predominantly. We have agreed a template for the case studies that includes the following elements: an abstract, profile of the institution, context and background, methodology – what research is informing the case study, overview of centralised supports, interoperability and synergies across the supports, opportunities associated with the existing model of support, challenges associated with the existing model of support, professional reflections, insights and recommendations, references.

In order to support the drafting of the case studies, and to reinforce the collaborative nature of our work, we will run a pre-conference workshop for those Action participants who are submitting case studies to the publication. Colleagues will bring a full draft of their case study to the workshop where we will peer review each other’s work and discuss in more detail the collection, including the processes involved in moving from drafting to publication.

If you are interested in our work please check our website on www.werelate.eu or seek out an Action member over the course of the conference.