Ton Vallen Award 2013

The second Ton Vallen Award attracted four submissions. The race was close this year, and the appreciation and scores given to all four submissions were extraordinary, pointing towards a very high level of quality and competitiveness in all of this year's submitted works.

We are happy to announce that the winner of the Ton Vallen Award 2013 is

Martha Sif Karrebæk

"What’s in Your Lunch Box Today?": Health, Respectability, and Ethnicity in the Primary Classroom

This paper, published in the Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, Vol. 22, Issue 1, pp. 1-22 (2012), offers a thought-provoking study of how ethnification processes in classrooms can develop around seemingly innocuous signs such as the contents of learners’ lunchboxes. Through discourses on ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ food given by parents and brought to school by learners, powerful signs of desirable and undesirable identities are produced. Karrebæk opens our eyes to the broad semiotic field brought into play in such processes, with discourse, objects and spaces all being heavily indexicalized in a meaning system that characterizes the Danish school regime in its struggle with diversity. The paper is driven by original fieldwork, and takes stock of recent developments in ethnography, semiotics, educational studies and sociolinguistics. It is a must-read for anyone concerned with education in superdiverse societies.

The jury congratulates Martha Sif Karrebæk and the other candidates on the quality of their work and encourages them to continue and extend the work they’re doing. The field of multilingualism and education is very much alive and junior scholars are making a difference!

Martha Sif Karrebæk will receive a book voucher from Multilingual Matters, whose support we gratefully acknowledge.

The Ton Vallen Award is supported by Multilingual Matters, Bristol, and the jury emphatically reiterates its gratitude to Tommi Grover of Multilingual Matters for his continued interest in the Award.