Title Promoter Affiliations Abstract "MiPRiS: Multilingualism in Prisons and Reintegration into Society: an interdisciplinary evaluation of Belgian language legislation, policy and practice within a European human rights framework" "Heidi Salaets" "Interpreting Studies, Antwerp Campus, Leuven Institute of Criminology, Research Unit Public Law" "Like many European states, Belgium is confronted with an increasingly multilingual population in its detention facilities. Among detainees, there are significant differences in the proficiency of the official languages in Belgium (Dutch, French and German). This project will study language legislation, policy and practice in Belgian prisons, to map to what extent it impairs the detention process and successful reintegration of prisoners into society. By combining an ethnographic study in situ, with a legal analysis of the European human rights law framework, the project will not only show how language practices impact reintegration trajectories, but also identify priorities for policy change. Hence, the project will produce a normative framework and policy recommendations that are relevant to all 46 Council of Europe member states." "MiPRiS: Multilingualism in Prisons and Reintegration into Society: an interdisciplinary evaluation of Belgian language legislation, policy and practice within a European human rights framework." "Heidi Salaets" "Interpreting Studies, Antwerp Campus, Research Unit Public Law, Leuven Institute of Criminology" "Like many European states, Belgium is confronted with an increasingly multilingual population in its detention facilities. Among detainees, there are significant differences in the proficiency of the official languages in Belgium (Dutch, French and German). This project will study language legislation, policy and practice in Belgian prisons, to map to what extent it impairs the detention process and successful re-integration of prisoners into society. By combining an ethnographic study in situ, with a legal analysis of the European human rights law framework, the project will not only show how language practices impact reintegration trajectories, but also identify priorities for policy change. Hence, the project will produce a normative framework and policy recommendations that are relevant to all 46 Council of Europe member states." "Multilingualism and the social media when used in the diaspora: practices of code selection/switching by Facebook users of Iranian descent in Belgium" "University of Groningen" "The project investigates aspects of multilingualism on Facebook, in particular code selection/code switching by language users of Iranian descent in a Belgium. The focus is three-fold: (i) the distributional salience of the various languages used, (ii) their functional role in the interactional architecture of social media, (iii) theconnections with the construction of a diasporic space characterized by fragmented/dislocated identities." "Lost in Translation? Multilingualism in Early Song in the Low Countries (1350-1550)" "David Burn" "Dutch Literature, Leuven, Musicology, Leuven, Translation and Intercultural Transfer, Antwerp Campus" "Multilingualism is a widely discussed societal phenomenon. The present project aims to contribute to a better understanding of multilingualism from a specific historical perspective: medieval and early modern song (1350-1550) in the Low Countries. A multidisciplinary collaboration between musicologists, musicians, translation scholars, (literary) historians, and database specialists will focus on mapping out multilingualism in the songs’ material sources, within the song repertory itself, and in the circulation of both. In the Integrated Database for Early Music (https://idemdatabase.org/), a new module will be built to process these data and to make them accessible for use by researchers and performers. The critical historical study of the multilingualism that shapes and diversifies the early song repertory will, furthermore, result in the creation of an authoritative, historically and critically informed body of song translations– a commodity that is in worldwide demand by scholars, performers, early music festivals, and concert halls." " Lost in Translation? Multilingualism in Early Song in the Low Countries (1350-1550)" "David Burn" "Alamire Foundation" "Multilingualism is a widely discussed societal phenomenon. The present project aims to contribute to a betterunderstanding of multilingualism from a specific historical perspective: medieval and early modern song(1350-1550) in the Low Countries. A multidisciplinary collaboration between musicologists,musicians, translation scholars, (literary) historians, and database specialists will focus on mapping outmultilingualism in the songs’ material sources, within the song repertory itself, and in the circulation of both.In the Integrated Database for Early Music (https://idemdatabase.org/), a new module will be built to processthese data and to make them accessible for use by researchers and performers. The critical historical study ofthe multilingualism that shapes and diversifies the early song repertory will, furthermore, result in thecreation of an authoritative, historically and critically informed body of song translations– a commodity thatis in worldwide demand by scholars, performers, early music festivals, and concert halls." "Promoting Early Multilingualism in Childhood and Childcare (ProEMC2)." "Orhan Agirdag" "Education and Society" "Although language diversity poses short-term challenges, early multilingualism and multiliteracy come with great benefits, at least, when it is correctly supported. Currently, many language minority (LM) families are distressed about language issues and many early childhood (EC) professionals (such as parenting advisors and childcare staff) feel insecure in their approach toward LM families. This project aims to transform this societal problem by promoting early multilingualism and multiliteracy in childhood and childcare in Flanders. " "Project MIDP IV (Multilingual Information and informatics Development) : Multilingualism from below." "Centre for Computational Linguistics, Psycholinguistics and Sociolinguistics (CLiPS), Grammar and Pragmatics" "In standard accounts of language policy and language planning, language users are too often viewed as the 'passive receivers' of linguistic decisions taken at the highest levels of state organization. In defiance of this tendency, the MIDP IV project wants to accentuate that subalternity involves, rather than excludes, agency. Through their everyday language practices and their discursive perceptions and interpretations of linguistic realities, those who are supposed to 'live' the language policies never submissively 'implement' them, but, appropriating them, steer them in novel, unforeseen directions. It is these dialectic processes of interaction between what is designed from above and how it is responded to from below which give shape to societies' overall patterns of multilingualism. This is the focus of the MIDP IV-fieldwork in the Xhariep (Free State Province, South Africa) and also the focus of the publication in which this research and other international research on the topic is reported on." "Stories of multilingualism: Connecting families and schools through visual narratives" "Orhan Agirdag" "Education and Society" "Co-lingual-S tackles a well-documented disconnect between family- and school language policies regarding multilingualism by applying innovative visual methods to understand multilingual family life, and develop multilingual pedagogies in schools. Co-lingual-S sets out to 1) understand how family members’ intersected identities (such as the interplay between gender, language and migration status) shapes family roles and actions in creating family language policies, 2) develop multilingual pedagogies with teachers by using multilingual storybooks that feature stories collected from families, and 3) understand how visual-narrative methods can serve as means to connect the worlds of families and schools. Study 1 collects semi-structured interviews, language portraits, drawings and photo-elicited narratives from family members. Family narratives are collaboratively re-created in the format of multilingual storybooks. In Study 2, teachers develop practices using these storybooks. Photo-elicited interviews and language portraits are also collected from teachers, and their practices are observed. The aim of Study 2 is to investigate teachers’ intersectional experience (such as gender, language repertoires, attitudes and pedagogical skills in multilingualism) in relation to what kind of practices they develop using the Co-Lingual-S books, and their potential impact on school language policy. Co-lingual-S this way pioneers a novel design that directly connects families and schools, and facilitates becoming ‘colinguals’ . It applies an interdisciplinary approach bridging sociology of families, sociolinguistics and education/teacher education. The outcomes advance the field of family- and school language policies by applying intersectional theory and visual methods. The findings are expected to cover the knowledge gap of the role of intersected identities in family- and school contexts regarding multilingualism, and support teachers to develop multilingual pedagogies." "Legitimizing elite multilingualism: Language policy, language practice and meta-pragmatic awareness in the international school" "Mieke Vandenbroucke" "Université Libre de Bruxelles, Grammar and Pragmatics" "This project examines the linguistic construction of elite multilingualism in the international school. International schools are expensive and exclusive educational institutions which typically provide transnational education for expat children. In answer to the lack of academic knowledge on how language-based elitism manifests itself in/through concrete language use and on the legitimation of elite multilingualism, this project specifically looks at (i) how language-centered elitism is produced in observable linguistic practices in the school and in its policy-making; and (ii) how a hierarchization of language use is meta-pragmatically legitimized by social actors as a valuable, respectable and justifiable educational asset, in spite of its contributions to social stratification processes and the wider inequities it perpetuates in society at large. For this case study, a linguistic ethnographic and interactional sociolinguistic approach is adopted, which implies the triangulated analysis of a comprehensive dataset including but not limited to interviews, recordings of classroom interaction, policy documents, school signs, pupils' diaries on language use and language portraits. In this way, this project sets out to generate (i) empirically innovative insights on the linguistic construction and legitimation of language-based elitism and, as a result, (ii) a conceptually refined and enriched understanding of language-centered elitism in education." "Lives in translation. The Paradoxes of Spanish-American Multilingual Autobiographical Writing 1980-2015." "An Van Hecke" "Translation and Intercultural Transfer, Antwerp Campus" "This project wants to investigate the complex relations between literary multilingualism and the construction of identity in contemporary autobiographical texts (1980-2015) written by authors from the Southern Cone (Argentina and Chile) and Mexico. The authors under consideration write in different languages simultaneously or alternatingly, or in a mother tongue influenced by other languages. Exile, migration and postcolonial emancipation have led to an increase in the number of multilingual literary texts in Latin-American literature from 1980 onwards. Their dominance on the Latin-American book market of the most recent years is highly remarkable. Our project wants to look into the textual and paratextual reflections of multilingualism in two corpora of selected autobiographical texts (1980-2005 and 2005-2015). By focusing on the stylistic and narratological dimensions of multilingualism in the texts, we want to test the hypothesis that a dominant metanarrative of problematic identity split, as manifested in language struggle, in older texts, has given way to a tendency towards the embrace of productive doubling and playful reinvention of language in the most recent ones. Situating these literary tendencies within their respective societal contexts will help us understand the evolutions and shifts that have taken place in contemporary Latin-American debates on identity and grant new insights into the ways in which literature both shapes and is shaped by these debates."