Mela Sarkar
Biography:
Mela Sarkar was born in Calcutta (now Kolkata), India, to a Ukrainian-Canadian mother and a Bangladeshi Brahmin father who had met as grad students at the University of Manitoba. They settled in Toronto, Canada, where she grew up. Issues of heritage versus dominant languages, plurilingualism/ pluriculturalism, and hybrid identities were therefore woven into the fabric of everyday normal for her. Since taking up her current position at Ï㽶ÊÓƵ, Montreal, Quebec, in 2001, she has branched out from mainstream second language acquisition research into critical sociolinguistic inquiry, with a focus on empowering minority-language speakers through diversification of their communicative repertoires.
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Position:
Associate Professor at McGill's Department of Integrated Studies in Education (DISE)