MEITS meets Multilingualism on My Mind

“MEITS meets Multilingualism on My Mind” was the title of the event that took place on November 23^rd and launched the research group based at the Foreign Language Department, UiB. The main guest speakers at the event were Professors Linda Fisher, Yongcan Liu and Michael Evans from the Faculty of Education at Cambridge University. They are the leaders of Strand 4 of the project MEITS – Multilingualism: Empowering Individuals, Transforming Societies and work in close collaboration with the Bergen-based team.

The researchers from Cambridge opened the talks and presented their interdisciplinary research project. Prof. Yongcan Liu contextualized the study and explained its six different strands: arts of identity; standard languages, norms and variation; sociolinguistic perspectives on multilingualism; the influence of multilingual identity on foreign language learning; language learning across the lifespan and multilingualism and cognition. Prof. Linda Fisher highlighted the importance of language learning in the development of a multilingual identity and the need for pedagogies that encourage schoolchildren to see themselves as multilingual. She also described the interventions the research group conducted in seven secondary schools in England. Closing up the section, Prof. Michael Evans presented the preliminary findings of the study. “Multilingualism on My mind” feels privileged to be given the chance to collaborate with such outstanding and inspiring scholars.