LAS Centre identities and practices within higher education: fragments for negotiation

The teaching of language and academic skills is diffused across higher education insitutions and is not uniquely located in LAS. This means that a discussion about identities and futures of 'LAS' in times of change is in itself problematic. Likewise, the discourses around centre identities within faculties, the role of technology and the web, and responses to an increasingly diverse student body float across insitutions with no privileged convergence on LAS. So it is necessary first to acknowledge that 'our' identity is still very much open to negotiation and contestation and that the insitutional fragmentation of LAS practices has consequences for a workable identity and a coherent response to times of change. I use a recent shift from New Zealand to Australia across two language centres, some postructural 'scaffolding', and representations of current practices and discourses to try to locate some responses to these questions and their implications for LAS professional identity practice, and organisation within institutions.