Research conducted by the School of Education’s MOSAIC Centre for Research on Multilingualism has been rated ‘Excellent’ by the Arts and Humanities research councils of Europe.

The research project, Investigating discourses of inheritance and identity in four multilingual European settings, was funded through the Humanities in the European Research Area (HERA) Joint Research Programme. A collaboration with Copenhagen University, Stockholm University, and Tilburg University, the project was led by MOSAIC researchers Professor Adrian Blackledge, Professor Angela Creese, Professor (Emeritus) Marilyn Martin-Jones, and Jaspreet Kaur Takhi.

A research team across the four universities investigated how multilingual young people in Denmark, The Netherlands, Sweden and the UK negotiate identity and belonging in and beyond educational settings. The project developed innovative research methods, and contributed to policy and practice in the inclusion of minority languages in Europe.

In awarding the project five ratings of ‘Excellent’, the HERA Review Panel said “This is an important project because in multi-cultural societies it is vital to understand how multilingual groups interact”. They considered that the project’s findings were “of great importance to future policy-makers and educationalists, and certainly deserve to be taken very seriously indeed by European governments”.

Project Leader Professor Adrian Blackledge said “This is a very welcome endorsement of the collaborative, international work of the MOSAIC Centre for Research on Multilingualism as we continue to investigate multilingualism in superdiverse societies”.