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Eve Gregory (born on 17 January 1948) is an English professor emerita of language and culture at Goldsmiths, University of London

Gregory is a strong promoter of collaborative teaching and learning, and brought her first group of PhD students (Jean Conteh, Rose Drury and Leena Robertson together in 1995/1996 to work as a team on developing their research methodologies and subsequently their data analysis. By 2001, Gregory had started the inter-collegiate seminars of the University of London, based in the UCL Division of Psychology and Language Sciences and supported by Dr Merle Mahon) seminars became a centre for cross-disciplinary discussions for PhD students across the whole country and internationally, and a source of academic support and friendship for many.

Eve Gregory is a skilled supervisor, unfailingly generous and supportive to her PhD students. She sees the pursuit of a PhD as a deeply personal endeavour, and willingly shares her own experiences of study and professional life, including the experiences of her own PhD study, which was undertaken at the Institute of Education, London, supervised by Margaret Meek Spencer.

Gregory's values are a vital part of her identity and inseparable from her work and academic engagement. She believes that education is a central driver in the promotion of equality and social justice, especially in the urban, multicultural communities in which she has lived and worked.

She was made a Professor at Goldsmith's in 2000, and her Inauguration event was particularly warm and memorable, attended by many of her former and current students. In her inauguration lecture, she focused on her personal experiences as a primary teacher in East London, and what she felt she learned from the children she taught, their families and communities.

These experiences fed directly into her research and writing, particularly her study of literacy in the East End of London across generations, co-written with Ann Williams, City Literacies (Routledge, 2000). Gregory and Williams’ linguistic ethnography of the literacy practices in the lives of children highlights the out-of-school literacies that are not visible to society. These include family reading involving siblings, parents and grandparents. The ethnography is about the celebration of literacy in a culturally diverse area of London, where the economically rich live side by side with the poor. This work shows that poverty has not been an impediment in the literacy learning of these children.

Gregory's interests remained strongly in the field of early literacy, reflected in her 2008/2018 book Learning to Read in a New Language (Sage), which was very influential in the study and teaching of literacy to young multilingual learners. Previously, in Making Sense of a New World: Learning to read in a second language (1996), Gregory followed the learning of bilingual children learning at home and in school. As a consequence, she supports the development of home-school links.

Eve Gregory is also very interested in multilingualism as a general approach in teaching and learning, and a tool for social justice, and she has worked over many years with European partners to develop links in education and research in the field. Between 2003- 2005, she and Charmian Kenner ran the very successful Multilingual Europe series of seminars at Goldsmith's, which led the way at the time in promoting a multilingual approach to research, policy development and practice in education in the UK, and promoted academic and friendship links that lasted for many years, with very fruitful outcomes. One of the main publications which reflected the collaborative values of the seminars was Multilingual Europe: Diversity and Learning (Trentham Books, 2008), edited by Charmian Kenner and Tina Hickey, to which Eve made a significant contribution.

Gregory not only explored diversity in learning. She also explored the diverse contexts in which learning takes place, including faith settings. With colleagues, she conducted an ethnographic study of children’s learning within a Bangladeshi British Muslim Mosque, the Ghanaian Church of Pentecost, a Polish Catholic Church and a Tamil Hindu Temple. In this work, which was assessed as being of excellent standards by the ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council, UK), the children’s learning is described as informal learning. Their learning is developed through apprenticeship on the part of the children from more experienced members who have the necessary literacy and language skills. The children’s faith literacy practices, such as prayer and singing, help them to make meaning. They ‘act out’ a text in songs or dances, using language to reproduce historical and cultural memory, making the text their own. They then practise the text through repetition and recitation until their ‘more experienced members’ deem it ‘perfect’ for them to perform which is different from practising to achieve success in a task in school. Living in a new country (Britain) has resulted in a syncretism of learning practices in which the children use their heritage language to develop literacy informally, thereby contributing to the vibrant nature of each of the four faiths in London.

Biography
Eve Gregory obtained her Diploma in Education with distinction from the Institute of Education, University of London in 1980. Gregory completed her PhD at the same institution twelve years later. She taught and supervised numerous home and international doctoral students at Goldsmiths, University of London, between 1987 and 2017, when she became a Professor Emerita.

Academic work
Eve Gregory is a literacy scholar with a strong belief in the role of children’s families and communities in their learning, with special reference to the learning of literacy in homes often regarded as “disadvantaged.” Inspired by the work of Shirley Brice-Heath and Denny Taylor, Gregory has worked for over three decades as an ethnographer in the homes, communities, and classrooms of both mono- and bilingual children in East London. Counter to official reports and unofficial myths, she has been able to uncover a wealth of skills possessed by young children in their homes and communities.

Personal life and honours
Eve Gregory grew up in East London with her parents and her brother Roy, who has given her a lovely niece, Annie. Gregory is married to Charly Kimmig, a German-born husband who has created wonderful landscapes and gardens in their homes and has supported Eve fully in her academic endeavours and journey. They met at university in the late 1960s, when they were both taking a German Degree at the University College in Swansea. Gregory and Kimmig love travelling and have travelled extensively to experience different cultures and languages.

Selected books
• Gregory, E. (2008) Learning to read in a new language: Making sense of words and worlds, New York: Sage.

• Gregory, E.; Conteh, J.; Kearney, C.; Mor, A (2005) The Art of Collusion: On Writing Educational Ethnographies. Stoke: Trentham.

• Gregory, E.; Williams, E. (2000) City Literacies: Learning to read cross generations and cultures. London and New York: Routledge.

• Gregory, E. (1996) Making Sense of a New World: Learning to Read in a Second Language, London and New York: Sage.

• Gregory, E.; Wolfendale (1986) “An In-Service Guide to Involving Parents in Reading. S. Northamptonshire: Language Development Centre.

Selected articles
• Gregory, E. (2016) ‘Learning to read: A third perspective’. Prospects. 46: 367-377.

• Gregory, E.;  Choudhury, H.; Ilankuberan, A.;  Kwapong, A.;  Woodham, M. (2013) ‘Practise, Performance and Perfection: Learning sacred texts in four faith communities in London’ in International Journal for the Sociology of Language, 220: 27-48. DOI 10.1515/ijsl-2013-0012

• Gregory, E.; Lytra, V.; Ilankuberan, A.;  Choudhury, H.; Woodham, M. (2012) ‘Translating Faith: Field narratives as a means of dialogue in collaborative ethnographic research ‘ in International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 11(3): 195-213. http://ejournals.library.ualberta.ca/index.php/IJQM/article/view/11841/14126

• Gregory, E.; Lytra, V.; Choudhury, H.; Ilankuberan, A.;  Woodham, M. (2012) ‘Syncretism as a creative act of mind: The narratives of children from four faith communities in London’ in Journal of Early Childhood Literacy. DOI: 10.1177/1468798412453151

Other links
Personal page, https://evegregory.wordpress.com/ Disappearing Londoners Research Project, https://evegregory.wordpress.com/ Becoming LIterate in Faith Settings (BeLiFS), http://www.belifs.co.uk (Doe anybody know what happened to this link? I am afraid it does not seem to be working.) Professional page, https://www.gold.ac.uk/educational-studies/staff/gregory