English
Prof. dr. Durk Gorter, project leader of the Mercator European Research Centre on Multilingualism and Language Learning and researcher at the Fryske Akademy, has been appointed as Ikerbasque research professor at the university of the Basque Country in San Sebastian, Spain as from January 1, 2008. In the Basque Country Durk Gorter will be conducting two large studies.
The first is a large international comparative study into minority languages in education, such as Basque or Frisian and other minority languages. The second study, which he will carry out together with economists and linguists, concerns the added value of bilingualism and the sustainability of language diversity. This is a unique opportunity for Durk Gorter to focus entirely on research.
Durk Gorter remains a member of the scientific board of the Mercator Research Centre and the supervisor of a comparative study into multilingual education in Fryslân and the Basque Country.
Sociolinguist Durk Gorter (1952) has been a researcher at the Fryske Akademy in Ljouwert/Leeuwarden, the Netherlands since 1978. His work has included a study into ‘Language in Fryslân’ and he has written his doctoral thesis on the ‘language of clerks and customers’. At the moment he is the project leader of the Mercator European Research Centre on Multilingualism and Language Learning. Apart from that he has been professor of Frisian language and literature at the University of Amsterdam on a part-time basis since 1994. He has published multiple articles and several books on the Frisian language and on European minority languages.
The Mercator Research Centre launches an Expert of the Month-series on its website. The first Expert of the Month will be Kadri Koreinik, sociologist and specialist in language studies especially in linguistic phenomena at the Võro Instituut in Estonia. She is also the author of one of the Mercator Research Centre Regional Dossiers Võro: The Võro language in education in Estonia (due to be published).
The Mercator Research Centre launches an Expert of the Month-series on its website. The first Expert of the Month will be Kadri Koreinik, sociologist and specialist in language studies especially in linguistic phenomena at the Võro Instituut in Estonia. She is also the author of one of the Mercator Research Centre Regional Dossiers Võro: The Võro language in education in Estonia (due to be published).
From now on each month there will be a new Expert of the Month, with rich content and analysis from experts in the field of regional and minority languages, small and immigrant languages in Europe, bilingualism and multilingualism, language learning and education. The Expert of the Month feature gives web visitors the chance to interact one-in-one with the Ask the expert-section. The feature also provides interesting and insightful comments regarding the subjects mentioned above, in-depth content and exclusive Q and A.
