Presentation of the VIQE

Virtual Institutes are a completely new way of approaching and solving a given challenge. The VIQE, Virtual Institue for Quality Education combines education, research and innovation for advanced studies in quality education.

In practice, VIQE will carry out the following activities:
– The Language Policy Research Project
– Research Seed Mobility Programme on Language and Cultural Diversity
– Joint PhD training activities for the existing PhD programmes on European languages and cultures.

What is the Language Policy Research Project: Language Policy and Multilingualism in European Universities?

The EC2U VIQE continues previously conducted research on language policy. The VIQE language policy research project studies current language policies of both universities participating in the European Alliances and those not participating in the official alliances described in the European Partnership Initiatives. The research team thus adopts a comparative approach to studying language policy practices. The research design is both qualitative and quantitative and incorporates research methods from the Humanities and Social Sciences, including the Digital Humanities.

The research team will analyse the current language policies in European Universities from different points of view:
Landscape linguistics (University of Salamanca)
Critical discourse analysis and linguistic ethnography (University of Coimbra)
Institutional language policies (University of Poitiers, University of Turku)
Foreign language didactics (University of Poitiers)
Multilingualism (University of Poitiers, University of Turku)
Digital linguistics (University of Poitiers, University of Turku)
Computational linguistics (University of Pavia)
Translation studies (University of Turku)
Education policy and language education (University of Iasi)
Social imaginaries, migrations (University of Jena)

Who is who at the VIQE?

Name of the researcher Expertise (1) and languages (2)
University of Salamanca (USAL)
-Prof. Dr. Raúl Sánchez Prieto (Principal Investigator)
-Dr. María Egido Vicente
-Amador García Tercero
(1) Language policy, landscape linguistics
(2) German, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, Bulgarian, English
University of Coimbra:
-Prof. Dr. Clara Keating
-Prof. Dr. Joana Vieira Santos
-Dr. Rute Soares
(1) Critical discourse analysis of language policy text, linguistic ethnography
(2) Portuguese, Spanish, English, French, German
University of Poitiers:
-Prof. Dr. Freiderikos Valetopoulos
-Dr. Stéphanie Gobet
-Dr. Sanja Boskovic
(1) Language policy, foreign language didactics, Digital Linguistics, Multilingualism
(2) French, Greek, Serbian, English, Polish, Russian, sign language
Universiy of Pavia:
-Prof. Dr. Elisabetta Jezek
(1) Computational linguistics
(2) Italian, Dutch, French, English
University of Turku:
-Prof. Dr. Kristiina Taivalkoski-Shilov
-Prof. Dr. Marjut Johansson
-Prof. Dr. Leena Kolehmainen
(1) Translation policy, Sociology of Translation, Digital Linguistics, Multilingualism, Institutional Language policies
(2) Finnish, Swedish, English, French, German
University of Iasi:
-Prof. Dr. Nicoleta Popa
(1) Education policy, language education
(2) Romanian, Italian, French, German
University of Jena:
Dr. Julien Bobineau
(1) Culture Theory and Communication Research

(2) German, French, Spanish, English

Opportunities for Students

VIQE is developing PhD training activities for the existing PhD programmes on European languages and cultures. The two VIQE training activities that will be designed and implemented in 2022 are:

-An EC2U Workshops for future university staff (“New multilingual learning and teaching spaces for European Campuses”), to be held at the University of Iasi (UAIC).

-An EC2U PhD intensive course for PhD students (“Machine Learning techniques and text processing tools applied to the study of linguistic diversity and cultural perception”), to be held at the University of Poitiers.