What is it about?

Europe has experienced several waves of migration within the 20th century that have led to the establishment of multilingual communities across the continent. A current large influx of migrants and refugees will lead to a considerable increase of multilinguals within Europe. Understanding the benefits and challenges of being multilingual is crucial for the education, wellbeing, and employment of immigrants and can impact their integration and prospects in Europe as well as the prospects of the European countries.

The mission of Multi-Mind is to seek fundamental breakthroughs in multilingualism research whilst training the new generation of researchers in world-leading labs using cutting edge methodologies and allowing them to build the necessary background and skills fostering their career progress as independent researchers in academic or non-academic sectors, in the first international, multidisciplinary, and multisectorial program on multilingualism.

MultiMind will conduct fundamental research on multilingualism across disciplines in a range of different social and educational settings, including migration and refugee settings, to investigate the influence of multilingualism on language learning, cognition, creativity, and decision making, on brain function and structure, and its role as a reserve in atypical populations. These issues are of prime importance for the future construction of shared cultural, educational, and health settings across Europe. Indeed, one of the big current challenges in Europe is the integration of refugees and immigrants into European states and the integration among European citizens living in different countries in Europe. Inevitably, this challenge starts and has the best chances to be won by focusing on the educational systems and on the influence that the use of languages has in daily life.

MultiMind is international in nature and will federate world-leading scientists from European and non-European countries with proven expertise conducting research in specific types of multilingual populations and methodologies. To address the interplay of multilingualism with education, cognition, brain, and health it is necessary to take a multidisciplinary approach. Therefore, MultiMind is a multidisciplinary consortium comprising researchers within linguistics, psychology, education, neuroscience, and speech & language therapy. MultiMind is also a multisectorial project that includes not only academic, but also non-academic beneficiaries and partners from education, health, publishing, and IT. Non-academic beneficiaries and partners will provide training in evidence-based research and non-academic secondments. This will enable early stage researchers (ESRs) to put theoretical knowledge into practice, experience working within non-academic organisations and develop transferable skills and will prepare ESRs for employment not only within the academia, but also in a range of other professions within the private and public sector. These organisations will also benefit from the knowledge obtained from MultiMind that promises to lead to best practise for inclusive education and health. It turn, this will have a significant impact on multilingual societies in Europe and across the globe.

Information

Duration from 2018 to 2022, funding volume: €220,000

Further information is available here.

Contact

Prof. Dr. Tanja Rinker

What is it about?

There are various methods for translating Latin texts. One common method is the so-called construction method, in which the remaining parts of the sentence are determined based on the verb. This method is often used because it is assumed that “natural reading” of Latin texts is too difficult for students.
However, can Latin learners still learn to read Latin texts naturally if they are trained to do so from the outset?
In our psycholinguistic reaction time study, we investigate the extent to which the choice of different translation methods affects the processing of Latin sentences.
This project is being carried out in cooperation with the Department of Classical Philology at the KU (Tobias Goldhahn, Philipp Buckl) and is funded by the proFOR program.

Contact

Dr. Anna Fiona Weiß

For several semesters now, there has been a collaboration with the German Protestant High School in Cairo (DEO), one of the largest and most renowned German schools abroad. Once a week, KU students enrolled in the “Vocabulary and Grammar” module teach DEO students digitally in small groups. The focus is on promoting active language use, especially speaking. The highlight is the field trip to Cairo, which usually takes place once a year and gives everyone involved the opportunity to get to know each other personally and work together in person.

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Since the 2023/24 winter semester, a teaching project has been underway with Penn State University (PSU). KU students take online German courses at PSU, assist with German lessons, and reflect on their experiences. This cooperation is embedded in the module “German as an Object of Study: Linguistic Foundations.”

Since the 2024/25 winter semester, there has been a cooperation with the Malteser association in Eichstätt, in which KU students provide language support to refugees from different countries of origin. The support takes place in various course formats (literacy course, children's course, language café). The students develop support units with appropriate materials and reflect on their experiences. The project is embedded in the module “DaZ and DaF in extracurricular learning contexts.”

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