FUNDED PROJECTS

The ETN “Linguistic Equity in Multilingual Regions” (LEMuR) brings together scholars, students and community partners committed to linguistic equity in four historically multilingual regions: the West of Ireland, the trans-Pyrenean Basque Country, Canton Bern in multilingual Switzerland and Southern Estonia.

Category: ENLIGHT Thematic Network

University: University of the Basque Country, University of Bern, University of Galway, University of Tartu
Period: 2025-2027

The ETN “Linguistic Equity in Multilingual Regions” (LEMuR) brings together scholars, students and community partners committed to linguistic equity in four historically multilingual regions: the West of Ireland, the trans-Pyrenean Basque Country, Canton Bern in multilingual Switzerland and Southern Estonia. These territories share not only a long history of power struggles in which language is implicated, but also a more recent increase in their linguistic and cultural diversity due to international migration. The network’s purpose is to understand – and transform – how historical language regimes shape present-day opportunities for minoritised speakers, with the original perspective of considering both historically minoritised / indigenous communities and migrant communities.

LEMuR follows two interrelated avenues of inquiry, Spaces and Speakers. Spaces interrogates cities, villages and landscapes through linguistic-landscape and city translation methods, challenging urban–rural and centre–periphery binaries and respective associations with multicultural migrant vs. autochthonous minority communities. Speakers foregrounds lived experience of multilingualism by examining published literary (auto)biographies as well as recorded oral (auto)biographies, allowing an understanding of equity issues remaining hidden in aggregate surveys. The transnational dimension of the ETN forges cross-border solidarity functioning as a catalyst for the sustainable promotion of linguistic equity. LEMuR thus advances ENLIGHT’s priority of Equity while also contributing to Culture & Creativity, Digital revolution and Impact of digitization and Health and Well-being.

The network’s team combines expertise in sociolinguistics, literary studies, education and translation studies, with plans to expand to human geography, city/rural development, political science, legal studies and philosophy. Senior academics work alongside early-career researchers and students through workshops, co-taught modules and participatory outreach involving museums, schools, care facilities, NGOs, language-planning bodies and policymakers.

A particular highlight of this project is the culmination of the two avenues of inquiry in two cultural-social outputs:

Activities within the Speakers avenue of inquiry, where we will work with both published literary (auto) and oral (auto)biographies collected in schools and nursing homes, will culminate in a multilingual collection on linguistic equity in language biographies.

Activities within the Spaces avenue of inquiry will culminate in a travelling exhibition based on the themes we will generate in two PhD Research seminars in which we will investigate cities, islands, villages, and wider regions as spaces of cultural and linguistic exchange.