The GRAM Research Group at the UIC Barcelona’s Institute for Multilingualism is proud to announce the 11th Spring Research Conference on Multilingual Acquisition.
The GRAM Research Group at UIC Barcelona’s Institute for Multilingualism is proud to announce the 11th Spring Research Conference on Multilingual Acquisition.
This year’s plenary speakers are Dr Núria Sebastián Gallés from Pompeu Fabra University and Dr Ruth Kircher from the European Centre for Minority Issues (ECMI). Along with our plenary speakers, we would like to encourage specialists in bilingualism and multilingualism research from different methodological perspectives to join us on this much-anticipated day of learning, collaboration and networking as we reflect on the evolving landscape of language learning research.
We would like to invite you to submit an abstract or register as an attendee for our 11th Spring Research Conference. Save the date to join us on 24 April 2026 on our beautiful UIC Barcelona Campus from 09.00 to 17.00.
We look forward to seeing you in Barcelona!
Registration details
- Registration details
Registration opens in November 2025. To sign up for the conference, please fill out this form (coming soon) and choose the corresponding fee:
- €0.00 Standard Fees: UIC Barcelona Community Online
- €0.00 Standard Fees: UIC Barcelona Community In-Person
- €15.00 Standard Fees: Online student attendee
- €25.00 Standard Fees: In-person student attendee
- €25.00 Standard Fees: Online general attendee
- €40.00 Standard Fees: In-person student speaker
- €50.00 Standard Fees: In-person general attendee
- €75.00 Standard Fees: In-person general speaker
*Student rates apply to undergraduate and postgraduate programmes (including PhD programmes). To confirm eligibility, please send proof of student status for the 2025-2026 academic year to springresearchconference@uic.cat (accepted documents include an enrolment certificate or an official letter from the programme coordinator).
Speaker registration closes on 15 January 2026.
If you have any further questions, please contact us at springresearchconference@uic.cat.
Call for papers
Final programme
24 April
| 08.45 h | Registration and Welcome Session |
| 09.15 h | Plenary Room 1 (Auditorium) : Núria Sebastián Gallés: Learning Two Lexicons: Foes and Friends. |
| 10.15 h | Coffee break |
| 10.40 h | Presentations Room 1 (Auditorium): Roberto Arias-Hermoso & Irene Guzmán-Alcón: Comparing students’ science writing in minority, majority and foreign languages in two bilingual contexts Aula 2 (D203): Sarah Syamken: Assessing Multilingual and Bilingual Phonology |
| 11.10 h | Presentations Room 1 (Auditorium): Tomás Dowling, Craig Neville, Conor Philpott, Diarmuid Lester, & Hilary Ní Chonchubhair: Teachers’ knowledge, skills, attitudes and needs in CLIL through Irish Room 2 (D203): Guendalina Gianfranchi: Stress Interaction in English Loanwords Used in Kusaal |
| 11.40 h | Presentations Room 1 (Auditorium): Sarah Wunderlich: The demand of textbook language – Opportunities and challenges for CLIL instruction Aula 2 (D203): Marina Sokolova: Are there pseudo-relatives in Catalan? Psycholinguistic insights into grammatical constraints |
| 12.10 h | Presentations Room 1 (Auditorium): Yvonne Werle: Hands-On Learning, Minds-On Language: CLIL and Digital Scaffolding in STEM Labs Aula 2 (D203): Inka Romero-Ortells Labrada, Manuel Perea, Eva Gutierrez-Sigut, & Jon Andoni Duñabeitia: Subtitle format and gaze behavior in bilingual instructional videos |
| 12.45 h | Lunch |
| 13.30 h | Poster Session Julija Běrinkowa: Understanding Language Use through the Lifeworld of Lower Sorbian New Speakers Ann-Katrin Biehl: From Campus to Karriere through CLIL: Equipping EME Students with Bilingual Disciplinary Literacies Patricia de Crignis, Johanna Wolf & Cecilia Ugartemendía: Spanish DOM in Multilingual Learners: German L3/L4, Heritage, and L1 Speakers Dragica Mirkovic, Ana Mandic Ivkovic & Ivana Vranic Petkovic: Integrating AI tools in ESP: Effects of Kahoot! and ChatGPT on vocabulary and learner autonomy Bart van Donselaar, Victora Van Oss, Eric Mijts & Jill Surmont: Language-in-education policies in Aruba: Ideologies, classroom realities and linguistic justice Gina G. Arnold: Pedagogic Task Design in CLIL: Insights from Pre-Service and In-Service Teachers Janine Knight & Marta Segura: From project to practice: Free resources for assessing Plurilingual and Intercultural competence in Primary schools |
| 14.15 h | Presentations Room 1 (Auditorium): Albina Kildeeva: What goes missing first? An error-profile study of Italian English bilinguals in Milan Room 2 (D203): Sebastian Müller: Multilingual and multimodal style in minority language TikToks: Toward a translanguaging approach to Papiamentu content creation |
| 14.45 h | Presentations Room 1 (Auditorium): Anwesha Mahapatra & Ayesha Kidwai: Reading Accuracy and Comprehension in Multilingual Rural Classrooms: Insights from Odisha, India Room 2 (D203): Sophie Rädel: Becoming a New Speaker: An explorative study of adult learners of Lower Sorbian |
| 15.15 h | Presentations Room 1 (Auditorium): Mireia Trenchs Parera & Carmen Pérez-Vidal: Cultural Capital and EFL Listening Gains before and after undergraduate mobility Aula 2 (D203): Simona Anastasio: The expression of motion events by multilingual learners: language background and psychotypology |
| 15.50 h | Plenary Room 1 (Auditorium): Ruth Kircher: Raising children with more than one language: The dimensionality, nature, and consequences of parental attitudes towards childhood multilingualism |
| 16.50 h | Closing words |
| 08.45 h | Registration and Welcome Session |
| 09.15 h | Plenary Room 1 (Auditorium) : Núria Sebastián Gallés: Learning Two Lexicons: Foes and Friends. |
| 10.15 h | Coffee break |
| 10.40 h | Presentations Room 1 (Auditorium): Roberto Arias-Hermoso & Irene Guzmán-Alcón: Comparing students’ science writing in minority, majority and foreign languages in two bilingual contexts Aula 2 (D203): Sarah Syamken: Assessing Multilingual and Bilingual Phonology |
| 11.10 h | Presentations Room 1 (Auditorium): Tomás Dowling, Craig Neville, Conor Philpott, Diarmuid Lester, & Hilary Ní Chonchubhair: Teachers’ knowledge, skills, attitudes and needs in CLIL through Irish Room 2 (D203): Guendalina Gianfranchi: Stress Interaction in English Loanwords Used in Kusaal |
| 11.40 h | Presentations Room 1 (Auditorium): Sarah Wunderlich: The demand of textbook language – Opportunities and challenges for CLIL instruction Aula 2 (D203): Marina Sokolova: Are there pseudo-relatives in Catalan? Psycholinguistic insights into grammatical constraints |
| 12.10 h | Presentations Room 1 (Auditorium): Yvonne Werle: Hands-On Learning, Minds-On Language: CLIL and Digital Scaffolding in STEM Labs Aula 2 (D203): Inka Romero-Ortells Labrada, Manuel Perea, Eva Gutierrez-Sigut, & Jon Andoni Duñabeitia: Subtitle format and gaze behavior in bilingual instructional videos |
| 12.45 h | Lunch |
| 13.30 h | Poster Session Julija Běrinkowa: Understanding Language Use through the Lifeworld of Lower Sorbian New Speakers Ann-Katrin Biehl: From Campus to Karriere through CLIL: Equipping EME Students with Bilingual Disciplinary Literacies Patricia de Crignis, Johanna Wolf & Cecilia Ugartemendía: Spanish DOM in Multilingual Learners: German L3/L4, Heritage, and L1 Speakers Dragica Mirkovic, Ana Mandic Ivkovic & Ivana Vranic Petkovic: Integrating AI tools in ESP: Effects of Kahoot! and ChatGPT on vocabulary and learner autonomy Bart van Donselaar, Victora Van Oss, Eric Mijts & Jill Surmont: Language-in-education policies in Aruba: Ideologies, classroom realities and linguistic justice Gina G. Arnold: Pedagogic Task Design in CLIL: Insights from Pre-Service and In-Service Teachers Janine Knight & Marta Segura: From project to practice: Free resources for assessing Plurilingual and Intercultural competence in Primary schools |
| 14.15 h | Presentations Room 1 (Auditorium): Albina Kildeeva: What goes missing first? An error-profile study of Italian English bilinguals in Milan Room 2 (D203): Sebastian Müller: Multilingual and multimodal style in minority language TikToks: Toward a translanguaging approach to Papiamentu content creation |
| 14.45 h | Presentations Room 1 (Auditorium): Anwesha Mahapatra & Ayesha Kidwai: Reading Accuracy and Comprehension in Multilingual Rural Classrooms: Insights from Odisha, India Room 2 (D203): Sophie Rädel: Becoming a New Speaker: An explorative study of adult learners of Lower Sorbian |
| 15.15 h | Presentations Room 1 (Auditorium): Mireia Trenchs Parera & Carmen Pérez-Vidal: Cultural Capital and EFL Listening Gains before and after undergraduate mobility Aula 2 (D203): Simona Anastasio: The expression of motion events by multilingual learners: language background and psychotypology |
| 15.50 h | Plenary Room 1 (Auditorium): Ruth Kircher: Raising children with more than one language: The dimensionality, nature, and consequences of parental attitudes towards childhood multilingualism |
| 16.50 h | Closing words |
Speakers
Curriculum Vitae
Dra. Núria Sebastián Gallés
Professor in Psychology, Pompeu Fabra University
Núria Sebastián received her PhD in Experimental Psychology at the University of Barcelona in 1986. Following postdoctoral training at the Max Plank Institute and the LSCP-CNRS in Paris, she was appointed senior lecturer at the Faculty of Psychology (University of Barcelona) in 1988 and was inducted as full professor in 2002. In 2009, she moved to the Universitat Pompeu Fabra. She has held visiting scholar positions at several research centres, including the Institute for Research in Cognitive Science (IRCS) at the University of Pennsylvania, the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience (ICN) at the University College London and the University of Chicago (2010). Her work has received international recognition, including a James S. McDonnell Foundation Award in 2001 (Bridging Mind, Brain and Behaviour Programme) and presenting the Nijmegen Lectures in 2005. She was awarded the ICREA Academia Prize by the Catalan Government in 2009 and in 2013. From 2002 to 2006 she served as a member of the advisory group for the OECD’s “Brain and Learning” initiative. In 2016 she was elected as a fellow of the British Academy. She was vice-president of the Scientific Council of the European Research Council from 2014 to 2016.
She currently leads the Speech Acquisition and Perception (SAP) Research Group at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra and coordinated the Consolider-Ingenio 2010 research consortium BRAINGLOT, focused on bilingualism and cognitive neuroscience. One of her current research projects is an ERC Advanced Grant “Under Control” investigating the relationship between attention and language development.
She has authored over 100 publications in international journals including Science, PNAS and The Journal of Neuroscience. She is currently associate editor of Developmental Science (since 2005) and Language Learning and Development (since 2013). She is also editor of the Cognitive Neuroscience Series of Language Learning and sits on the editorial boards of several journals, including Bilingualism: Language and Cognition and Trends in Neuroscience and Education.
Núria Sebastián received her PhD in Experimental Psychology at the University of Barcelona in 1986. Following postdoctoral training at the Max Plank Institute and the LSCP-CNRS in Paris, she was appointed senior lecturer at the Faculty of Psychology (University of Barcelona) in 1988 and was inducted as full professor in 2002. In 2009, she moved to the Universitat Pompeu Fabra. She has held visiting scholar positions at several research centres, including the Institute for Research in Cognitive Science (IRCS) at the University of Pennsylvania, the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience (ICN) at the University College London and the University of Chicago (2010). Her work has received international recognition, including a James S. McDonnell Foundation Award in 2001 (Bridging Mind, Brain and Behaviour Programme) and presenting the Nijmegen Lectures in 2005. She was awarded the ICREA Academia Prize by the Catalan Government in 2009 and in 2013. From 2002 to 2006 she served as a member of the advisory group for the OECD’s “Brain and Learning” initiative. In 2016 she was elected as a fellow of the British Academy. She was vice-president of the Scientific Council of the European Research Council from 2014 to 2016.
She currently leads the Speech Acquisition and Perception (SAP) Research Group at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra and coordinated the Consolider-Ingenio 2010 research consortium BRAINGLOT, focused on bilingualism and cognitive neuroscience. One of her current research projects is an ERC Advanced Grant “Under Control” investigating the relationship between attention and language development.
She has authored over 100 publications in international journals including Science, PNAS and The Journal of Neuroscience. She is currently associate editor of Developmental Science (since 2005) and Language Learning and Development (since 2013). She is also editor of the Cognitive Neuroscience Series of Language Learning and sits on the editorial boards of several journals, including Bilingualism: Language and Cognition and Trends in Neuroscience and Education.
Curriculum Vitae
Dra. Ruth Kircher
Senior researcher, European Centre for Minority Issues (ECMI)
Ruth Kircher is a senior researcher at the European Centre for Minority Issues (ECMI) in Flensburg, Germany. She also holds an affiliated position as associate professor in the Department of Psychology at Concordia University in Montreal and is a member of the Canadian Centre for Studies and Research on Bilingualism and Language Planning at the University of Ottawa. She holds degrees from the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg (MA), the University of Durham (MA), and Queen Mary University of London (PhD).
As a sociolinguist with a specialisation in multilingualism and minority languages, her work focuses on three interrelated areas: language attitudes and their influence on linguistic and social behaviour; language policy and planning at the societal level; and family language policy and intergenerational language transmission.
Her research experience spans a range of contexts in North America and Europe. Currently, her work focuses primarily on multilingual family language policies in Canada, the United States, Germany and the Netherlands. In addition to publishing extensively on her research, she has authored several publications on research methods and she co-edited the volume Research Methods in Language Attitudes (Cambridge University Press, 2022).
Ruth Kircher is a senior researcher at the European Centre for Minority Issues (ECMI) in Flensburg, Germany. She also holds an affiliated position as associate professor in the Department of Psychology at Concordia University in Montreal and is a member of the Canadian Centre for Studies and Research on Bilingualism and Language Planning at the University of Ottawa. She holds degrees from the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg (MA), the University of Durham (MA), and Queen Mary University of London (PhD).
As a sociolinguist with a specialisation in multilingualism and minority languages, her work focuses on three interrelated areas: language attitudes and their influence on linguistic and social behaviour; language policy and planning at the societal level; and family language policy and intergenerational language transmission.
Her research experience spans a range of contexts in North America and Europe. Currently, her work focuses primarily on multilingual family language policies in Canada, the United States, Germany and the Netherlands. In addition to publishing extensively on her research, she has authored several publications on research methods and she co-edited the volume Research Methods in Language Attitudes (Cambridge University Press, 2022).
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Accommodation
Vilana Hotel 4*
Hotel Catalonia Mikado 3*
Hotel Atiram Tres Torres 3*
Travelling to Barcelona?
Programs of previous seminars
10th Annual Spring Research Conference - Descarrega el programa
2nd Spring Research Seminar: Multilingual Education
1st Spring Research Seminar
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