Platform for Linguistic and Epistemic Justice (PLEJ)

Description

The Platform for Linguistic and Epistemic Justice (PLEJ) is a research centre of the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES). Its purpose is to place socio-cultural linguistic research front and centre among the interdisciplinary areas of enquiry with social impact at SSEES, UCL and beyond, and its focus is to conduct and encourage interdisciplinary linguistic and epistemic justice research. The centre has three strands: minoritisation, identity and ideology; contact zones, covering linguistic diversity, endangerment and multilingualism; and language, affect and wellbeing, covering language in contexts of trauma, conflict and loss and their implications for research ethics. It asks how forms of domination and resistance are conveyed through discourse and multi-modal forms of interaction, and how socio-linguistically informed cross-disciplinary research can address the impact of uneven local and global power dynamics on social mobility, diversity, equity and inclusion in a region that includes Central and South-East Europe, Ukraine, Central and Northern Asia, Russia, the Arctic and the Circum-Polar region, the Caucasus and the circum-Baltic area. Since a launch event in October 2024 it has held talks, discussions, film screenings and a book launch, and in 2026 it released the PLEJ Podcast, in which a student associate talks to UCL students and early career researchers about their work. It also runs the PLEJ Grant, which can be awarded in each academic year to MA and PhD students at UCL and in 2025-26 covered project or fieldwork costs of up to £500 per successful applicant.

Currently active

Yes

Offers funding

Yes, this infrastructure provides funding in the following categories:

Founding year

2024

Contact details

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Categorisation

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University affiliation(s)

University College London (UCL)
London