From Slovakia to Shenzhen: how Leeds language research inspired poetry, paintings and a play in China

A Leeds research project into language, education and social encounters between the Slovak and Roma communities has inspired a play in China, as well as a community book project, poetry and painting.

In 2020 artist and poet Sophie Herxheimer was invited by Professor Maggie Kubanyiova (Language Education, University of Leeds), to take part in conversations curated through an international research network. The AHRC-funded network ETHER (Ethics and Aesthetics of Encountering the Other) brought together academics, artists and others to explore the shared question, ‘How do people of conflicting worldviews, memories and future visions encounter each other?’

These conversations involved linguists, community activists, architects, artists, philosophers, poets, teachers, curators, musicians, dancers and sign language interpreters. The work culminated in a book Listening Without Borders: Creating Spaces for Encountering Difference (Multilingual Matters, 2024), which was shortlisted and awarded a Runner Up for this year's prestigious BAAL Book Prize.

Maggie Kubanyiova (right) and her collaborator, an artist and poet Sophie Herxheimer (left) in a conversation on mobilising language creatively to reduce stigma. Photograph by Mark Epstein

Caption: Sophie Herxheimer in conversation with Maggie Kubanyiova at the University of Leeds. Photograph by Mark Epstein.

In 2023, Maggie approached Sophie again, this time about a research project grounded in Maggie’s native Slovakia.

The study explored how language research can help build meaningful connections between communities that have been kept apart by a history of inequality. It focused on interactions between Slovak and Roma people in rural Slovakia, where Roma communities have long faced social, economic and linguistic disadvantage.

Maggie invited Sophie to respond creatively to her findings through painting and poetry.

Listening with love

Sophie created a series of paintings alongside six poems in response to the fieldwork. Working with distinguished Romani scholar and translator, Anna Koptová, Maggie then helped translate the poems into Romani and shape them into a format that could be used with children, their teachers, and other community members to enjoy and play games with.

Drawing on this work, artist-designer Sarah-Jane Mason (who makes books with communities) created Under the Big Tree Šuňiben Kamibnaha, a playful bilingual book and set of cards using Sophie’s poems and illustrations in both English and Romani. Published in August 2023, the book has since been used in community workshops in Slovakia.

As Maggie says,

“My research shows that reducing people to labels is a damaging way of living with our neighbours. Doing the same to their language can often have the same consequences. The simple human desire to be heard and encountered is hardly noticed, let alone met, in the busyness of such labelling.”

Under the Big Tree: Šuňiben  kamibnaha is an invitation to gather and listen to the voices of others… Šuňiben kamibnaha means listening with love. This kind of affective engagement with others refrains from judgment and revels in life.

The book and cards are now used by educators and community groups in Slovakia. They offer the chance for communities to become listeners to one another and challenge attitudes towards the language of those who have been historically marginalised. They are free to use in homes, classrooms, community libraries, school theatres and even village festivals.

From Slovakia to China: a new journey

In 2025, Sophie was contacted by Amit Lahav, Artistic Director of internationally acclaimed physical theatre company Gecko.

Her poem Duet/Duetas began a new journey as the lyrics for a haunting song composed by Michael Crean. The song featured in Dream Awake: The Deal, an immersive, promenade-style theatre show devised in Shanghai by the international performance collective Dream Awake, founded by Amit Lahav. The production premiered in China in October 2005 and invites audiences to move through a surreal reimagining of 1930s France.

So, when writing the music to this show - I started to look for Romani lyrics to create the songs with. And when I found this poem, I really loved it and didn't want to change anything about it. The song accompanies a moment where Marcel (the main character in this play) imagines a life with a girl who he is in love with who works at his office. The Tailor, who is also the devil, is tempting him by summoning this image.

Michael Crean, musician, Dream Awake: The Deal

Continuing the work

Maggie is currently leading The Encounter: Language Education in Third Spaces, a research project developed with the Slovak non-profit Cesta von. The project reimagines language education as a shared space built on dignity, mutual learning and lived experience.

A key outcome of the study The Encounter Guide offers practical principles and real-world examples for educators working in multilingual and intercultural contexts. Available in Slovak and English via the Cesta von website, it has been widely shared with NGOs, teachers and institutions working in multilingual and intercultural education.

Maggie’s current initiative ‘Building communities in multilingual environments’ remains grounded in Slovakia but is designed to be transferrable to other contexts, including the UK.

Across these projects, her work continues to explore how research can be transformed into creative forms – and shared back with the communities at its heart.