Dr Nicola McLelland has been awarded a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship for a project to provide the first history of languages education in the UK (1600-
2000), which will make an important contribution to the history of education, and will also inform teacher-trainers, trainee & practising teachers, policy makers & curriculum developers facing many changes to modern language education (e.g. primary languages, changes to national curriculum for modern languages, the crisis in provision and uptake, and efforts to ensure diversity of language teaching and increased uptake of strategically important languages).

The project will consider which languages were learned and with what aims, who taught (e.g. were native-speaker teachers considered better or worse?), who learnt (e.g. was it an elite or every child in comprehensive education?), the role of stakeholders (such as exam boards, government policy) and to what effect (e.g. exams set by university boards could delay syllabus changes). It will analyse the methods and materials used in light of such variables.