Emma-Louise Silva

As a polyglottal bookworm, I thoroughly look forward to exploring the writings of 18^th century British writers for the prestigious Mind-Bending Grammars project. Linguistics has always been a great interest of mine and it is part and parcel of who I am. My British mother grew up speaking Mancunian and my Chilean father acquired English as a second language when he emigrated in the early eighties. Therefore, my parents blessed me with English and Spanish. Our family crossed the Channel from the United Kingdom to Belgium when I was thirteen, enabling me to pick up Dutch and French during the years I spent in the Belgian education system.

Having combined my studies with a part-time job, with renovation works in my house and with the fruits of motherhood, I finally completed my MA in Literature and Linguistics with a specialisation in Theatre and Film studies at the University of Antwerp in 2015. In my thesis I aimed to describe the ephemeral cinephilic moment by researching its foundation in star studies, photogénie, epiphany and revelationism. I conducted research on the biography, the kinesthetics and the acoustics of the performer Cary Grant as a case study.