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The UCL School of European Languages, Culture and Society (SELCS) was formed in 2010 as a merger of six language departments that look back on a long and distinguished history.
Our history (from 1826)
Establishing subjects not previously taught in English universities had been one of UCL鈥檚 most notable innovations when it was founded in 1826 as a radical counter-institution to Oxford and Cambridge, with Modern Foreign Languages standing out in particular.
Chairs in German, Italian and Spanish were established at the outset and French offered as well by P. F. Merlet, who was promoted to a full professorship a few years after, in 1836.
Most strikingly, UCL鈥檚 modern languages were taught by refugees from their respective countries. German was taught by Ludwig von M眉hlenfels, a progressive and independent thinker, who having escaped from a political prison in Prussia, was appointed while passing through London on his way to join a band of fellow exiles in Mexico. Italian was put into the hands of Antonio (Anthony) Panizzi, who had escaped from a death sentence in the Duchy of Modena, present-day Italy. Besides his post in the College, Panizzi took that of Assistant Librarian at the British Museum in 1831, becoming Keeper of Printed Books there in 1837 and eventually Principal Librarian in 1856. After giving up his Chair, he achieved permanent fame as creator of both the Library Catalogue and the Reading Room at the British Museum, since split off to become the British Library. Spanish was handled by Antonio Alcal谩 Galiano, a leading figure in Spanish Romantic literature and a marked man in Spain after 1832 when he moved a resolution against Ferdinand VII in the Spanish parliament and as a result was sentenced to death.
At the end of World War I, Scandinavian (1917) and Dutch Studies (1919) were introduced into the curriculum 鈥� again the first such programmes in the Anglophone world, with the Scottish essayist and literary scholar William Paton Ker and the later famous historian Pieter Geyl, one of the most influential thinkers on history of all time, as first incumbents. Today, SELCS is one of only two universities in the UK offering undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in these less-widely taught languages.聽
The spectrum of languages taught was further expanded in 2014, when Portuguese was added to our programme in Iberian and Latin American Studies. Together with our friends and colleagues in the School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies (SSEES), also founded in the wake of World War I, and in the departments of Greek and Latin and Hebrew and Jewish Studies, part of UCL since its beginnings, we offer one of largest ranges of modern languages in the UK and the Anglophone world 鈥� and together with the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) across the road, an independent but sister institution within the University of London, Bloomsbury certainly can lay claim to being the world capital of modern languages in Higher Education.
About the聽Centre for Multidisciplinary and Intercultural Inquiry (CMII)
As part of our Centre for Multidisciplinary and Intercultural Inquiry (CMII), we have also systematically built up postgraduate degrees in:
- Comparative Literature
- European Studies
- Early Modern Studies
- Film Studies
- Health Humanities
- Gender Studies
- Translation Studies
These degrees are cross-cutting programmes across language departments. Translation Studies received a momentous boost when in 2013 the Centre of Translation Studies (CenTras) joined our ranks, having formerly been affiliated with Imperial College.
As part of these programmes we have also acquired significant research expertise in non-European languages, with particular strengths in African, Arabic and Chinese Studies.
Sources
- Negley Harte and John North, The World of UCL, 1828鈥�2004, London: UCL Press, 2004, pp. 58 ff
- F. M. L. Thompson, The University of London and the World of Learning, 1836鈥�1986, London: The Hambledon Press, 1990, p. 70
- Marnie Hughes-Warrington, Fifty Key Thinkers on History, London: Routledge, 32015, pp. 109鈥�114
Who we are today and what we do
The School of European Languages, Culture and Society (SELCS) is the largest and most diverse language department in the UK. We currently have over 1200 students enrolled on our wide portfolio of undergraduate, postgraduate-taught and postgraduate-research programmes.
Our strength lies in our diversity: we provide world-class expertise in the widest range of European languages across the UK modern and medieval languages curriculum and across a unique range of disciplines and programmes.
At undergraduate level, we offer programmes in eleven languages (Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Icelandic, Norwegian, Old Norse, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish), a flexible BA Language and Culture and a unique programme in Comparative Literature with a language.
We are also the only department in England to offer both an MSc and an MA in Translation.
Postgraduate modules in our Centre for Translation Studies (CenTraS) includes:
- translation theory and history
- literary and theatre translation
- audio-visual translation (subtitling, voiceover, dubbing)
- medical, technical and scientific translation
- crisis translation
- translation technology and automation
- interpreting, audio description, and subtitling and captioning for d/Deaf and hard of hearing people
CenTraS is also renowned for its world-leading expertise in translation technology and works closely with industry partners to ensure that its programmes reflect the latest technology and machine translation developments.
In addition to our language tuition and research, we are a thriving centre of multidisciplinary research. At undergraduate level, in addition to our language-specific modules, we offer a wide variety of non-language-specific and intercultural European Languages, Culture and Society (ELCS) modules. These are mirrored at postgraduate level by our wide range of MA and MSc programmes in Comparative Literature, Early Modern Studies, European Studies, Film Studies, Gender Society & Representation, Health Humanities & Philosophy, Politics & Economics of Health, Language, Culture & History, and Translation Studies.
These programmes, housed in our postgraduate Centre for Multidisciplinary and Intercultural Inquiry (CMII) serve to consolidate our interdisciplinary research strengths through a portfolio of long-standing, successful graduate programmes, collaborative doctoral supervision and corresponding research partnerships.
Diversity, multi-disciplinarity and globality are thus central to our research activities and to our working environment.
Find out more about the Centre for Multidisciplinary and Intercultural Inquiry (CMII).
Find out more about the Centre for Translation Studies (CenTraS).