WP165 The next ten years for applied linguistics?

This short paper asks how applied linguistics is likely to be affected by ongoing changes in higher education in countries like Britain.? In the first part, it refers to (a) a growing role for universities in regional innovation, (b) a move towards project-based teaching, and (c) the digital challenge to established social science methods.? Turning to applied linguistics, it then suggests that Manchester University?s Multilingual Manchester project illustrates some of these shifts, combining pedagogy, research and civic engagement in a way that helps to ?interpret global issues on a local scale?.? Indeed, here the methodological retheorisations associated with terms like ?superdiversity?, ?translanguaging? etc can also play a valuable part, helping non-linguists to make better sense of changing sociolinguistic conditions. But when it comes to understanding how our lives are being reshaping by digital media, it is vital to assert the hard graft of technical skills development as a renewed priority in applied linguistics.