Members of BM Luxembourg

Claudine Kirsch is the Director of BM Luxembourg. She is Associate Professor at the University of Luxembourg, Faculty of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences, and Vice-head of the Institute for Research on Multilingualism. Her research areas include language learning and teaching, multilingualism, multiliteracies, early childhood, family language policies, and collaboration between parents and educators.

Gabrijela Aleksić is a research scientist at the University of Luxembourg, the Faculty of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences, Department of Behavioural and Cognitive Sciences, Institute of Lifespan Development, Family, and Culture. Her research interests involve multilingualism, early childhood education, home literacy environment, family language policies, home-school collaboration, early numeracy and literacy, and socio-emotional development of preschool children.

Džoen Bebić-Crestany is a postdoctoral researcher working at the Institute for Research on Multilingualism of the University of Luxembourg since March 2021. Her research interest range from multilingualism, multilingual families, and governmental policies to philosophy, social justice and the theory of recognition.

Flavia R. Bley is a is a doctorate candidate at the University of Luxembourg, Faculty of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences. Her research looks at how newly arrived preschool children learn additional languages in multilingual Luxembourgish schools, after-school childcare institutions, at the same time their first language is used at home, focusing more specifically on the supporting structures provided by the adults, who mediate the new social contexts for them, i.e. teachers, parents and caretakers. Her research interests include early childhood language acquisition, multilingual pedagogy, and biliteracies.

Gabriele Budach is Associate Professor at the University of Luxembourg, Faculty of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences. Her research interests involve communication and learning in multilingual and multicultural contexts with a particular focus on multimodal pedagogies, and visual, object and arts-based methodologies, in formal and informal educational environments.

Sarah Degano is a doctoral researcher at the University of Luxembourg, Faculty of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences, and part of the CALIDIE research project since January 2017. Previously, she worked as a qualified primary school teacher, which is why she is particularly interested in language learning and language practices. Based on two primary schools in Luxembourg, her doctoral research explores the ways in which multilingual pupils of different backgrounds deploy their semiotic repertoires to engage in learning activities.

Katrien Deroey is an Assistant Professor in Applied Linguistics and Language Teaching, Head of English at the university’s Language Centre and Vice-head of the Institute for English Studies. She has a background in theoretical and applied linguistics including an MSc in Human Communication Sciences. As a corpus linguist, she has mainly published on lecture discourse. Her current research is on the linguistic features of Luxembourgish English, multilingual pedagogy for academic language teaching, and English Medium Instruction.

Ingrid de Saint-Georges is Associate Professor at the University of Luxembourg, the Faculty of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences. She engages in interdisciplinary research, with areas of interest including multilingualism, workplace learning and communication, diversity in Higher Education, vocational education and learning.

Pascale Engel de Abreu is a Psychologist and Associate Professor at the University of Luxembourg. She studies cognitive development in multilingual children. She explores cognitive processes in children with typical development and in children with neurodevelopmental disorders (such as SLI or dyslexia for example).

Sabine Ehrhart is Associate Professor in Ethnolinguistics at the University of Luxembourg, Faculty of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences. She is general editor for Open Linguistics (de Gruyter) and acts as a linguistic advisor for research institutions in more than a dozen countries worldwide. Her research focuses on language contact and educational policies in plurilingual settings (relations between family and school, multilingual workplaces and linguistic diversity in the health sector), on the five continents.

Adelheid Hu is Professor of Multilingual Education and Applied Linguistics at the University of Luxembourg. Her main research interests include plurilingual education; intercultural studies; language policy; migration and globalization. Before working in Luxembourg (since 2011), she has been Professor for Foreign Language Pedagogy at the University of Hamburg (2001-2011). She is head of the doctoral training unit CALIDIE and the University of Luxembourg Language Centre (ULLC).

Birgit Huemer is Assistant Professor in Applied Linguistics and Language Teaching at the University of Luxembourg, Vice-Head of the University of Luxembourg Language Centre, Head of German at the Language Centre, and member of the Institute for German Language, Literature and Interculturalism. She has a background in text- and discourse analysis. Her main research areas are academic writing, multilingual discourse, multimodality, and semiotics. She has published on academic writing in multilingual contexts and multimodality.

Valérie Kemp is a doctoral researcher at the University of Luxembourg, Faculty of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences since July 2020. She is part of a research team which examines collaboration between parents and educators and the multiliteracy practices in Luxembourgish crèches. More particularly, she studies the interactions between three-year-old children of different linguistic backgrounds and socioeconomic status in three crèches in Luxembourg.

Eve Lejot is Senior lecturer in Applied Linguistics and Language Teaching at the University of Luxembourg, and Head of French at the university’s Language Centre. Her research is on multilingualism, workplace learning and communication, language learning and teaching in multilingual and multicultural classrooms, language teacher training and professionalization, and French as academic writing in multilingual contexts.

Ariana Loff is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Luxembourg, Faculty of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences. Her research areas include reading, language development and their associated disorders, multilingualism, home language policies of language minority families and how to better build bridges between science and the general public devising interventions tailored to these groups.

Veronika Lovrits is a doctoral researcher at the University of Luxembourg, Faculty of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences. Her work merges perspectives of critical sociolinguistics and language-sensitive management. She runs research in an EU institution in Luxembourg, investigating effects of talk about languages and pragmatic ways to address language-related tensions in a multilingual team.

Simone Mortini completed her PhD at the University of Luxembourg and the University of Cologne in Germany. She worked in the research project “MuLiPEC” on the development of multilingual pedagogies in Early Childhood Education and Care. Her doctoral research focused on young emergent multilingual children’s translanguaging and agency as they were appropriating new languages. Since 2020, she works for the National Youth Service (SNJ) in Luxembourg. She is in charge of implementing multilingual education and inclusion in the non-formal education sector and coordinates innovation projects in the field of language, communication and media.

Mahdi Mowlaei is a doctoral researcher at the Institute for Research on Multilingualism at the University of Luxembourg. He is interested in sociolinguistics, education and multilingualism and his current research focuses on multilingual practices and identities in families, online media, and school contexts. He started working on MOSAIC project with the AFR grant in 2022.

Nancy Morys is Senior lecturer for language education at the University of Luxembourg. She teaches in the multilingual Bachelor of Educational Sciences and is member of the Institute for Research on Multilingualism. Her research interests are language learning and teaching in multilingual and multicultural classrooms, language teacher training and professionalization, and French as a second/foreign language in multilingual contexts.

Carolina Nikaedo is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Luxembourg, Faculty of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences. As a developmental psychologist her mains areas of interest include children’s cognitive and language development, early literacy acquisition, and teacher and parent training. She is particularly interested in translating scientific-based findings into information and practices that can be applied in the day to day of schools and family homes.

Maria Obojska is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Luxembourg, Faculty of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences. Her research interests include family multilingualism, language policy, multilingualism in education, identity constructions in multilingual settings and visual methodology in multilingualism research. She is currently investigating language practices of multilinguals at the intersection of school and family.

Kevin Simoes Loureiro is a doctoral researcher at the University of Luxembourg, Faculty of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences. His doctoral thesis builds on the implementation of a plurilingual education policy in Luxembourgish non-formal early childhood education and care settings. His research interests include language education policies, social and educational inequalities, dualism of structure and agency, education systems, and institutionalism.

Potheini Vaiouli is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Luxembourg, Faculty of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences. Her research centers around communication and language development of young children with neurodevelopmental disorders (such as autism), with a special focus on family-centered, music interventions. She is currently investigating digital media practices for language and literacy learning in multilingual families in Luxembourg.

Cyril Wealer is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Luxembourg, Faculty of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences, and a member of the Institute for Research on Multilingualism. His research centers around questions related to environmental influences on children’s multilingual language development, learning to read in a second language, and cross-language transfer of early-literacy skills.