Perspectives on collaborative research between staff and students: the ‘Charvas and Chorbas’ project

This paper presents perspectives on an innovative approach to engaging students in research activity jointly with their tutor in the first stages of their undergraduate experience. A collaborative research group involving students and staff was established, embedded in a module on a BA in English Language. This paper reports on the staff and student experience of this project and is co-authored by a student who was part of the project and the member of staff who led it. This project played an integral part in a first year undergraduate module called Language, Culture and Communication, part of the BA in English Language. The module interrogates ideas of how language works in the context of society, how language and culture are linked and how this plays out in practice. The project described here engaged a group of first year students in researching the construct of the 'Charva' as a means of encouraging young, mainly white, British undergraduates to explore perspectives on the concept of 'culture'.