Neil Stuart is an Associate Professor in Geography, a Director of Teaching Quality and Deputy Director for Internationalism in the University of Edinburgh, School of Geosciences. A former Director of the globally renowned Masters in Geographic Information Science (GIS) at Edinburgh, Neil gained his PhD in Geography from the University of Leeds in 1990. He has over 30 years of international research and teaching experience. As Deputy Director International, Neil represents the School of Geosciences, and the College of Science and Engineering of the University of Edinburgh throughout Latin America
Ponencia: Developing your skills beyond language to help address global challenges
Edinburgh University is a world-class university, with research projects on every continent of the world. Whilst some global challenges such as climate change, deforestation or food security can be monitored globally, to gain a deeper understanding of how these issues affect people, we need to study them at a local scale. To do this well, we need to work together across language barriers, with people with different cultures and knowledges. In this talk, Neil explores his own journey as an academic at the University of Edinburgh, using examples such as protecting forests in Belize, and understanding how indigenous communities manage volcano hazards in Guatemala, to illustrate how he found different ways to communicate with scientists, politicians, government officials, NGOs, and communities who did not speak the same language. This talk is aimed specifically for language teachers, especially those seeing themselves as global citizens, and wanting to develop their careers beyond purely their linguistic abilities. The talk gives examples of Masters and PhD programmes at the University of Edinburgh that can widen your skills and knowledge, giving you a more rounded, 360 degree perspective to help you teach the next generation how we can all contribute to tackling these global challenges.