Founded by Rewriting Wor(l)ds co-lead Prof. Sarah McGeown and co-directed with project lead Dr Patrick Errington, the University of Edinburgh’s Literacy Lab seeks to explore, understand and enhance the literacy practices, experiences and outcomes of children, young people, and adults, drawing on different disciplinary perspectives and using a range of methodological approaches. With members across Schools of Education, Literature and Psychology, the lab integrates theoretical, conceptual and methodological expertise to illuminate our understanding of how literacy can enrich lives, and support wellbeing.
Lab researchers work regularly in research-practice partnerships, or using participatory approaches, to ensure children, young people, teachers, other professionals and literacy organisations and charities contribute meaningfully towards the lab's research.
Created and led by project co-Lead Prof. Dan Mirman, the University of Edinburgh's Language and Cognitive Dynamics Lab investigates language and cognitive processes and impairments using behavioural and neuroimaging methods.
Current research focuses on (1) comprehension of narratives (e.g., books and movies), (2) discourse and functional communication strategies used by people with language deficits after left hemisphere stroke (aphasia), and (3) aesthetic aspects of poetic language processing, including links between reading for pleasure and wellbeing. Researchers in the lab aim for "Pasteur's Quadrant" – to answer fundamental questions in cognitive science and neuroscience in a way that has practical applications, such as new insights into language impairments and helping to develop better rehabilitation strategies.
Led by project advisor Marco Bernini, Durham University's Narrative and Cognition Lab brings together scholars from narrative theory, cognitive scientists (philosophers of mind, neuroscientists, psychologists, phenomenologists, neurobiologists), and creative artists to create a methodological catalyst for exploring narrative, cognition, and narrative cognition.
The Lab hosts international collaborators and visiting scholars, short-term fellowships, seminar series, workshops, and resident artists, as well as a partnership with the Edinburgh International Book Festival. Through the creation of a hybrid (online and in-person) collaborative vessel, it charts, navigates, records and reflects on interdisciplinary encounters, methodological exchanges of theories and experiments targeting a spectrum of common, fringe, or hidden experiences. These include exploring how immersive and imaginative experiences relate to intractable states such as dreaming or fantasy, or investigating the boundary between imagination and reality.
