Team

Dr Helena Roquet is the director of the Institute for Multilingualism and the Department of Applied Linguistics at UIC Barcelona, where she teaches undergraduate and postgraduate courses in the field of foreign language acquisition. She has a PhD in Second Language Acquisition from Pompeu Fabra University (2011). She is currently the director of the Master's Degree in Acquisition and Teaching of English as a Foreign Language at UIC. She is also a member of the emerging research group GRAM (Multilingual Acquisition Research Group) at UIC and has participated in several nationally and internationally funded research projects. Currently, she is co-principal investigator of the Multilingual Development project in Primary Education, funded by the Ministry of Science and Innovation. Her main lines of research are the acquisition of second and third languages, bilingualism and multilingualism, and CLIL (Integrated Learning of Contents and Foreign Languages).

Selected publications

Martyn Baker has been a teacher in the Institute for Multilingualism at UIC Barcelona since 1999, working in the faculties of Humanities, Communication Sciences, Economic and Social Sciences. He has also collaborated on outreach projects such as a publishing project with Santillana and the preparation of official English language exams. He has been teaching English since 1987, obtained the DELTA in 1992 and currently also teaches at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF) on Tecnocampus Mataró. He has also taught English Literature in the UNED (Terrassa), on intensive courses at the Escola Oficial d’Idiomes (EOI) for over 20 years and has experience as an examiner for the Cambridge FCE exam..

Suzanne Córdova has been a teacher in the Institute for Multilingualism [LK1] at UIC Barcelona since 2010 and has taught English in the Communications, Business Administration and Law Faculties. She began teaching in 2000 and obtained the CELTA RSA the same year. She has collaborated on outreach projects with the textbook publisher Santillana Education and has been developing official English exams with the same publisher for more than 6 years. She has taught English for Specific purposes for over 12 years and worked as a freelance translator for over a decade. In addition, she has been working at ESADE Pedralbes and Sant Cugat for over 3 years in the Law and Business Administration departments and has also taught online classes at the UOC, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. She worked for 3 years at NELC (The New Executive Language Centre). Suzanne also has experience as a FCE and CAE examiner for Cambridge English Language Assessment.

Dr Natalia Evnitskaya is part of the Institute for Multilingualism and the subdirector of the Department of Applied Linguistics at the Universitat Internacional de Catalunya (UIC Barcelona). She is also a teacher and teacher trainer working with students in the Faculty of Education at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels, both in on-campus and online programmes. She has 15 years of experience teaching TEFL and CLIL courses at a university level. Dr Evnitskaya has extensive experience in postgraduate student supervision, having directed or co-directed MA dissertations and PhD theses since 2012. Her research interests are the following: (a) CLIL, EMI/ICLHE, TEFL; pre-service and in-service teacher education; classroom interaction; L2 interactional competence and multimodal conversation analysis; and (b) CLIL, cognitive discourse functions (CDFs); disciplinary literacies in L2; and systemic-functional linguistics. She has published widely on these topics and has participated in several national and international research projects, as well as coordinated the organisation of a number of conferences on CLIL, EFL and SLA. She has been a predoctoral and postdoctoral visiting researcher at the University of Neuchatel (Switzerland), University of Vienna (Austria), and University of Jyväskylä (Finland). Currently, she is a research head of the GRAM research group at UIC Barcelona. 

Selected publications

Dr Janine Knight is part of the Institute for Multilingualism at UIC Barcelona, where she is a teacher and teacher trainer working with students in the Faculty of Education. She has had over 20 years' experience in teaching and management within primary, secondary school, further and higher education sectors with respect to first and second language development (literacy and additional language learning). In previous roles she has been a head of department for literacy and language at a Further Education college, co-ordinated cross-institutional learning support and supervised internal inspections of the language provision for young people and adults in community centres and the prison sector. She earned a PhD from the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) with a thesis on developing spoken interaction skills online. She is interested in Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL), plurilingual approaches to learning and using a Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) approach in university classes.

Selected publications

Doris Stanger has been a teacher in the Institute for Multilingualism at UIC Barcelona since 2009. She normally teaches in the faculties of Communication Sciences and Economic and Social Sciences. She has also collaborated on outreach projects such as a publishing project with Santillana and the preparation of official English language exams. She has over 20 years’ experience in teaching English as a foreign language and has taught in the North American Institute and online at the Open University of Catalonia (UOC). She is currently completing a Master’s Degree in E-Learning / ICT at the UOC.

Jean Vilanova is co-founder of the Language Service, a department which has evolved into the Institute for Multilingualism at UIC Barcelona. She worked as director and subdirector of the Language Service for a number of years. She has also been a programme coordinator and carried out teaching and syllabus design tasks in the different degree programmes. Jean also spent time working at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, teaching on a series of English language programmes for international students, a foundation course for overseas students wishing to enrol in Australian universities and a government English language migrant programme. She currently teaches at degree and master’s level and is head of language services at UIC Barcelona.

Esteve Valls holds a PhD in Catalan Language and Literature from the University of Barcelona and is currently head of the Catalan Office and assistant director of the Institute for Multilingualism at UIC Barcelona. He is also an adjunct lecturer in the Department of Linguistic and Literary Education at the University of Barcelona, having previously worked in the Department of Catalan Language and Literature at this university and on the Barcelona Campus of the UNED. His main lines of research include language variation and change in dialectical varieties of Catalan and the impact of borders and regional language policies on the phonetic, phonological, morphological and lexical evolution of these varieties. He performs research as a member of the project Fenòmens d’interfície fonètica-fonologia-morfologia des de la perspectiva de la variació lingüística [Phonetics, phonology and morphology interface phenomena from the perspective of linguistic variation] and the consolidated research group Study Group on Variation (GEV). He was also awarded the 4th Joan Veny Research Grant from the Ramon Muntaner Institute for his project La incidència de l’efecte frontera en l’autonomització de la llengua a la cruïlla catalanoaragonesa [The impact of the border effect on the autonomisation of the language at the border between Catalonia and Aragon] and has received other distinctions such as the Francesc de Borja Moll Dialectology Award from the Institute for Catalan Studies.

Selected publications

Anna Girmé Soler holds a degree in Catalan Language and Literature and a Postgraduate Degree in Language Consultancy and Editorial Services from the University of Barcelona. She has worked both in cultural affairs and language consulting and text editing for publishing companies and media. She joined the Catalan Unit as a Catalan and Spanish language specialist in 2017.

Laia Rosàs Redondo holds an undergraduate degree and PhD in Catalan Language and Literature from the University of Barcelona. She has worked as a language consultant and has taught Catalan to adults (Consorci per a la Normalització Lingüística, CIEE Barcelona Study Center, University of Barcelona). She also has experience in sociocultural promotion and as a Spanish teacher in Portland, Oregon (USA). Her collaboration with UIC Barcelona began in 2011, and since 2016 she has worked as a language specialist at the Catalan Office of the Institute for Multilingualism, where she is involved in teaching and sociocultural and linguistic promotion activities.

Bàrbara Serra Viñals holds a degree in Catalan Language and Literature and a Master’s degree in Language Consultancy, Editorial Services and Multilingual Management from the University of Barcelona. She has worked on the second edition of the Diccionari de l’Institut d’Estudis Catalans and took part in the Diccionari del Català Contemporani project at Institut d’Estudis Catalans (from 2000 to 2006). She has also taught Catalan and Spanish as a foreign language in England and the United States, from 2006 to 2009). She has been working as a Catalan and Spanish language specialist at the Catalan Office since 2011.

Monica Clua joined UIC Barcelona in 2011 as a full-time teacher with the Institute for Multilingualism and is based exclusively at the Sant Cugat Campus. Her teaching includes discourse analysis and professional communication in research in the Medicine, Nursing, Physiotherapy and Dentistry undergraduate programmes. She is a graduate in health sciences and began a Bachelor's of Science Degree with The Open University UK in 2009, until her interests turned to Content and Language Integrated Learning in Higher Education (ICHLE), in which she combines her knowledge and experience as a health professional and language specialist. She recently completed her Master’s Degree in Education Research in Language and Literature at the Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona (UAB) with a thesis that explored embodied multimodality as a meaning-making system in the context of English as an academic lingua franca. She has recently started her PhD, which will build on her MA dissertation to further explore notions of meaning construction through embodied semiotic resources in the context of a multilingual university setting.

Selected publications

Dr Mandy Deal is assistant director of the Institute for Multilingualism at UIC Barcelona and head of the Third Languages Unit on the Sant Cugat Campus. She has taught in the area of multilingual higher education since 1989 and is a specialist in Content and Language Integrated Learning in Higher Education (ICLHE). She joined UIC Barcelona in 1999 and has developed and taught ICLHE-based courses mainly on the health sciences campus. During this time she has collaborated with other departments on interdisciplinary projects. Dr Deal holds an undergraduate degree in French and German, a Master’s Degree in Applied Linguistics and a PhD in Teaching in Language and Literature. Her current research focus is in student-to-student collaborative learning in a multilingual higher education setting. She is a member of the Research Group on Plurilingual Interaction and Teaching (GREIP). Her recent projects have included a research stay at the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland and also active participation in the interuniversity collaboration to develop the Examen de Capacitació per a la Docència en Anglès per al personal acadèmic de les universitats catalanes (the Qualification Exam for Teaching in English for Faculty of Catalan Universities).

Selected publications

Dr Yağmur Elif Met is a researcher and lecturer at Universitat Internacional de Catalunya where she teaches Scientific & Academic English. She earned her PhD in Communication, Education and Humanities at UIC Barcelona, with her thesis “Individual differences in English vocabulary acquisition of very young learners in Spain: Internal & external factors” in 2023. Prior to her doctoral studies, she obtained a Master’s Degree from the University of Barcelona in Applied Linguistics and Language Acquisition in Multilingual Contexts in 2018, following her Bachelor’s Degree in English Language Teaching (ELT) from Maltepe University in Istanbul, Türkiye in 2012. Her research primarily centres on the acquisition of English as a foreign language, with a specific emphasis on individual differences (IDs) such as language aptitude, working memory, and affective factors including L2 motivation and their impact on language learning. Actively participating in various research projects, she is a member of the GRAM research group at UIC Barcelona. With over a decade of experience teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL) to diverse learners in both Türkiye and Spain, Dr Met brings a wealth of practical insights to her academic research. Her extensive teaching background has significantly informed her research endeavours, providing valuable perspectives on language acquisition processes.

Selected publications

• Met, Y.E. (2018). The relationship between language aptitude, working memory capacity, motivation and L2 Spanish proficiency of adult learners in an immersion context. Master’s dissertation supervised by Dr Carmen Muñoz and Dr Maria del Mar Suárez. University of Barcelona.

Dr Noelia Navarro is the academic coordinator at UIC’s Sant Cugat campus, where she teaches classes in several bachelor’s and master's degrees in the Faculty of Education about cognitive factors in learning foreign languages, as well as giving classes on different types of research and academic writing  within the Health Sciences. She defended her thesis “Academic discourse at university: corpus approaches to learner writing” (excellent, cum laude) at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM) in June 2020. Previously, she graduated in English Philology at the UCM and obtained a Master's Degree in Teaching English as a Foreign Language at the Pompeu Fabra University. Her main lines of research are: corpus linguistics; academic writing; multilingualism and integrated content and language learning (ICLHE). She specialises in different academic genres and phraseological aspects of writing. The results of her research have been published in quality journals such as the Journal of Immersion and Content-Based Language Education (Scopus Q1), English Language Teaching (JCR Q2) and RESLA (JCR Q2). Currently, Noelia is a member of the Multilingual Acquisition Research Group (GRAM) where she is participating in the Multilingual Development in Primary Education (MuDPrE) research project funded by the Ministry of Science and Innovation.

Selected publications

Marta Segura is a researcher and lecturer at the Universitat Internacional de Catalunya (Barcelona, Spain). She is a member of the GRAM (Research Group on Multilingual Acquisition). Her main research interests lie within the field of foreign and societal language acquisition by school-aged children (pre-primary to secondary levels), bilingualism effects, Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), and teacher perceptions and training. Her doctoral dissertation examined the effects of a soft-CLIL programme on lexical development by pre-primary education students, as well as the perceptions of pre-service and in-service teachers regarding the implementation of CLIL in pre-primary to ultimately identify its potential benefits, challenges, and needs. She is currently actively participating in several research projects with different goals within the applied linguistics field: to study multilingual development in primary education Catalan-Spanish bilingual students; to develop a three-way tool (students, teachers and families) to assess intercultural and plurilingual competence in highly complex and multicultural primary schools [LK1] in Catalunya; and to examine the use and effects of ICT tools in CLIL learners and teachers across the EU.

Wendi Smallwood has been an English teacher in the Institute for Multilingualism at UIC Barcelona since 2012. She graduated as an English teacher from the University of Victoria (Canada), in 1995 and completed a master’s course in TESOL at Hanyang University (South Korea) in 2005. She has taught English as a second language, as a foreign language and for specific purposes internationally in Canada, Japan, South Korea and Spain. She has been an official IELTS examiner for both the writing and speaking sections and has also collaborated on outreach projects such as a publishing project with Santillana.