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Partnerships

Mercator Network

The longest-running partnership of the Mercator Research Centre is the Mercator Network. This Network was founded in 1987, and at that time consisted of three institutions: Mercator Education (the forerunner of Mercator Research Centre), Mercator Legislation (at CIEMEN, in Barcelona) and Mercator Media (at the University of Aberystwyth, Wales). Each focused on a different aspect of multilingualism and the position of minority languages. Since then the network has existed in various forms, and gradually expanded.

In one of its recent cooperative projects, LEARNMe (2013-2016), the network consisted of: 

SOAS World Languages Institute and CiDLeS

For more than ten years, the Mercator Research Centre has maintained a standing cooperation with the SOAS World Languages Institute, part of the University of London. More recently, CIDLeS (Centro Interdisciplinar de Documentação Linguística e Social) from Minde, Portugal, has joined this partnership.

Every year, one of the institutes hosts an expert seminar. In December 2016, all the partners gathered in Leeuwarden for the seminar 'Language documentation, teaching materials and didactics' and in October 2017, the seminar 'Communities in Control: Learning tools and strategies for multilingual endangered language communities' was organized in Alcanena, Portugal.

In 2018, the partnership organizes the conference Big Cities, Small Languages (14-16 November) in Berlin, together with the Leibniz-Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft. You are cordially invited.

Network to Promote Linguistic Diversity (NPLD)

Mercator is, through the Fryske Akademy, an associative member of the NPLD – Network to Promote Linguistic Diversity. The NPLD brings together national and regional governments, universities and associations from around Europe that are involved with language planning for minority languages. Mercator is currently one of the associative members elected to sit in the Steering Committee of the NPLD.

Federal Union of European Nationalities (FUEN)

The FUEN (Federal Union of European Nationalities) is the European umbrella organisation of the autochthonous, national minorities  in Europe. It was founded more than 65 years ago in Paris and sees itself as the advocate and civil society representative of the European minorities. FUEN has around 90 member organisations altogether. On several occasions, Mercator co-operated with the FUEN in projects and events, for example with the safepack initiative.

Cooperative research projects

The Mercator Research Centre is continuously involved in international cooperation projects. Over the years, Mercator has taken part in many such projects, often as the coordinating partner. Current examples of international multi-partner projects are COMBI and Teaching in Diversity.

For an overview of our projects, please visit our Project page.

Partnerships at home

Aside of its international networks, the Mercator Research Centre is also proud of its partners closer to home. This of course includes the provincial government of Fryslân, as a major subsidizer. In recent years, Mercator has also cooperated with or carried out work for: