Language & Learning Network
Language and Learning is a burgeoning research area internationally and more than 20 researchers and doctoral students at the Faculty of Languages are active in this field.
Learning takes place in many different contexts, both formally at school and at work, as well as in more informal contexts. Swedish society is also developing towards increased linguistic, ethnic and cultural diversity. The relationship between language and learning can therefore be studied from a number of different perspectives. The Language and Learning Network brings together active researchers, teachers and doctoral students with an interest in:
- Language acquisition
- Multilingualism in the individual and in society
- Reading and writing development
- Testing and assessment
- Language use in different learning contexts
The network meets regularly for collaboration and planning of interdepartmental research and outreach activities. Among other things, lunch meetings are held once a month, and thematic seminars and workshops are organised 4-6 times a year, typically with outside experts as guest spea-kers.
Example from Anna Sahlée’s and Mikael Kalm’s research on how Swedish teachers assessed high-school students’ written exams (essays) in the late 1800s. Photograph by Anna Sahlée.
We also mentor and support each other in perfecting our generic acade-mic skills in the field of language and learning research. In the network, all departments within the Faculty of Languages are represented (Lingui-stics and Philology, Scandinavian languages, Modern languages, English), and we also welcome members from other faculties, in particular the Faculty of Education, to contribute with different perspectives on langu-age and learning.
Contact the network coordinator if you would like to join the network and be included in our mailing list.
Coordinator (samordnare): Pascale Wehbe
Scientific leader (vetenskaplig ledare): Ute Bohnacker
For more information about current research and past and present re-search projects within Language and Learning, please see the network members’ individual university web pages and/or browse their publica-tions in DiVA (the Swedish institutional repository for research publica-tions). Two such projects are illustrated with photographs below and to the right.
Monthly lunch meetings take place at Kajutan (next to Matikum), from 12 a.m. to 1 p.m. Lunch meetings in the spring term of 2025:
- Monday 20 January
- Friday 21 February
- Tuesday 11 March
- Wednesday 9 April
- Friday 16 May
- Friday 23 May (different venue, part of workshop on authentic learner language)
- Thursday 12 June
Planned events for 2025 include:
- 24 January. Vocabulary development workshop in bilingual children II (with invited speakers, including Ida Rosqvist, Lund University, Natalia Gagarina, Leibniz-ZAS Berlin, and Magda Łuniewska, Warszawa University).
- 18–19 March. Nätverksinternat (internal work retreat). Every few years, network members go away together for two intensive days of mentoring, academic skills training and collaboration. In 2023, we focused on career paths, pitches, funding acquisition and grant proposals. In 2025 we will discuss peer reviewing, publication strategies, media contacts, research ethics and data treatment.
- 23 May. Workshop on authentic materials in second language teaching (with invited speakers, including Anita Thomas, Fribourg University, and Angela Marx Åberg, Linnaeus University).
- 30 June – 1 July. MAIN Hub, Workshop on Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN).
- Further on. Workshop on language use and language testing in preschools (with invited speakers).
Events organized in 2024:
- 5 February. Communication and media training with the university press office.
- 23 April. Bilingualism in Lithuania and in the Lithuanian diaspora. Seminar with Inga Hilbig, Vilnius University.
- 12 November. Family language policies of members of the Kurdish diaspora in Europe: a sociolinguistic and ethnographic study (Ile-de-France, Geneva and Stockholm). Seminar with Berivan Biral, Rouen University.
- 13 December. Pitching projects and feedback on research proposals.
A child tells a story from the MAIN pictures (Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives). An example of a research project on multilingual children’s development of narrative skills (BiLI-TAS project, Ute Bohnacker). Photograph by Linnéa Öberg.
Project members
Contact
- info@lingfil.uu.se