The excellent supervisory record and systems of support in the Humanities at Cardiff were recognised by the AHRC in its award of the AHRC Block Grant Partnership (BGP) in 2008, and were explicit in the positive comments made by assessors regarding the planning process, evidence of ‘a strong and distinctive interdisciplinarity’ and ‘a very high level of coherence and consistency in the proposal’. They also commented on ‘a very high level of research environment and training across the subjects’.

The research undertaken by the President’s Research Scholarship students will explore the ways in which ‘multiculturalism’ was itself a cultural construct of particular historical circumstances and how the dangers of national dissolution on the one hand, and of discrimination against minorities on the other, may be confronted by its re-construction. Research will thereby contribute to public understanding, theory and policy formation, and creative production in areas, for example, of:

• The interactions between minority languages, multilingualism, lingua franca and cultural identity;
• The display and performance of religion, ethnic and cultural identities;
• Memories and minorities within Wales;
• Parallel legal systems and ethnocultural justice;
• The destruction of multicultural communities through ethnic or nationalist violence and other forms of cultural aggression.

The programme will train future researchers and academics with a varied set of intellectual tools for analysing cultural phenomena and the realities of contemporary Welsh, British and international cultures within a perspective of constant ‘re-constructing’.

Researchers will be prepared for academic careers, to which, in addition to their specialist knowledge, they will bring the intellectual and methodological synergies of the multidisciplinary environment, and add to human capital in a broad range of public-facing professions in which an active and constructive attitude to multicultural phenomena are an essential component.