Alongside the study of literature in degree programmes in modern languages, the curriculum is increasingly focusing on intercultural communication in a number of ways, and in so doing, new questions are being asked by researchers in the area of language learning and teaching. This book brings together a number of recent studies that present the current research of both established scholars in the field and younger researchers who introduce new perspectives. As the chapters were originally delivered as papers at a conference organised jointly by the National Committee for Modern Language Studies of the Royal Irish Academy and the Irish Association of Applied Linguistics (IRAAL), the majority of the contributors write from their experience of higher education in Ireland.