Professor Lorna Carson
Professor in Applied Linguistics, Linguistics

Projects

• Title
  • LIFELANGS Living Observatory of Shared Languages and Identities on the Island of Ireland
• Summary
  • LIFELANGS Living Observatory of Shared Languages and Identities on the Island of Ireland is a Strand II Emerging Hubs of Excellence project funded under the Higher Education Authority North South Research Programme (NSRP). It is a large-scale, four-year research project exploring linguistic and cultural diversity, social cohesion, and inclusivity in Ireland and Northern Ireland. The LIFELANGS project is led jointly by a team from Trinity College Dublin and Queen's University Belfast. The team is creating a multilingual and multimodal corpus, conducting two nationwide surveys, and developing evidence-based teaching and learning language and intercultural materials. The Living Observatory embeds two core theoretical concepts: critical interculturality and intersectionality. Critical interculturality moves beyond functional notions of intercultural competence to focus on the transformative intercultural capacities that are required to enable contemporary societies to become conscious about their internal diversities, and more inclusive and equitable. Acknowledging the complex interrelationships between multiple axes of power in society, LIFELANGS examines how cultural and linguistic identities intersect with dimensions such as age, gender, class, health, disability, sexuality, race, religion, and ethnicity. We employ a mixed-method approach, broadly interpretivist, transformative, and participatory in design. The project's datasets will be freely available online through an interactive interface employing a GIS-enabled mapping function. We are a multidisciplinary team of 20 researchers, including 5 post-doctoral fellows and 4 doctoral students. We are collaborating with 20 established partners, including cross-border agencies, grassroots organisations, teacher-education colleges, charities, schools, language advocacy groups, and examination/qualification bodies. We draw on citizen science and crowdsourcing in our research design, data collection and meaning-making.
• Funding Agency
  • Higher Education Authority North South Research Programme
• Date From
  • 01/12/2025
• Date To
  • 30/11/2029

• Title
  • Read with MEE: Read with Multilingual Early Education
• Summary
  • The READ With MEE (Multilingual Early Education) project addresses the need to support literacy development in young multilinguals aged 2-6, especially those from minority and migrant language backgrounds. It is a three-year Erasmus+ KA2 Cooperation Partnership (2023"2026) that aims to close the achievement gap facing multilingual children from national, regional, migrant, and refugee minority backgrounds by supporting their literacy development across their full linguistic repertoire. Its work packages centre on promoting interactive, engaging book reading in early childhood education and care settings, libraries, and homes, built on close collaboration with researchers and practitioners to ensure evidence-based, field-relevant tools. The project's concrete outputs include its Handbook-INC: Multiliteracy Development for All, a plain-language guide to research findings and practical recommendations developed from a state-of-the-art literature review (available in English, Basque, Frisian, Spanish, Dutch, and Irish), a series of expert-interview and best-practice videos, an online library of inclusive multilingual books and resources, and an interactive app-based reading game offering a shared multilingual story experience in ten languages. Together these tools aim to strengthen professional and parental knowledge of multilingual early literacy, foster positive attitudes towards linguistic diversity, and give practitioners and families across Europe practical means to support young multilingual learners' language development.
• Funding Agency
  • European Union
• Date From
  • 31-12-2023
• Date To
  • 30-12-2026

• Title
  • BAQONDE - Boosting the Use of African Languages in Education. A Qualified Organized Nationwide Development Strategy for South Africa
• Summary
  • The BAQONDE project was a three-year Erasmus+ Capacity Building in Higher Education project, led by the University of Salamanca, in partnership with North-West University, the University of KwaZulu-Natal, and Rhodes University in South Africa, University of Groningen and Trinity College Dublin in Europe. Its name (meaning understand in the Nguni languages of South Africa) reflects its central aim: tackling the inequalities of a higher education system that often disadvantages students whose mother tongue is an indigenous African language, by promoting the use, development, and academic recognition of these languages within South African universities. BAQONDE established African Language Development Units (ALDUs) across partner institutions, developing educational and terminological materials for teaching in indigenous languages across different disciplines, running research seminars and methodology workshops for multilingual contexts, and organising exchange visits and training for students and early-career researchers. The project also built lasting public engagement through outreach activities, school visits, research-based multilingual toolkits, and awareness-raising events in South African communities.
• Funding Agency
  • European Union
• Date From
  • 15/01/2021
• Date To
  • 14/02/2024

• Title
  • INCLUDEED - Social cohesion and Inclusion: Developing the Educational possibilities of the European Multilingual Heritage
• Summary
  • The INCLUDEED project addressed the social inclusion of disadvantaged groups in Europe, specifically the needs of immigrants and refugees who already possessed basic host-language skills, by helping them move beyond linguistic competence alone towards socio-pragmatic competence, drawing on research from the field of applied linguistics. The project's work packages centred on developing accessible, data-driven, learner-focused teaching methodologies and personalised learning environments, producing a free multilingual online course explicitly framed around sociopragmatic integration ("A Step Forward"/"Un paso adelante," available in six languages), alongside a companion "Guide for the Linguistic Inclusion of Migrants" (in Spanish, English, French, German, Italian, and Portuguese) addressing the practical and cultural challenges of migrant integration, based on research findings in the field.
• Funding Agency
  • European Union
• Date From
  • 01/09/2020
• Date To
  • 31/08/2023

• Title
  • VirtuLApp - Virtual Language App
• Summary
  • VirtuLApp (Virtual Language App) was a three-year Erasmus+ KA2 Strategic Partnership project, coordinated by the Mercator European Research Centre/Fryske Akademy together with partners including ATiT (Belgium), LUCA School of Arts (Belgium), Trinity College Dublin, and the University of the Basque Country (Spain). The project addressed the needs of teachers working in increasingly multilingual classrooms by building their knowledge of multilingual didactics, supporting the integration of migrant and minority languages, and reducing unnecessary language separation in teaching. Its activities centred on developing an innovative multididactic approach and toolkit for classroom use, comprising a digital handbook answering teachers' frequently asked questions, a series of didactical videos showcasing best practices from across Europe, a gallery of expert interviews, and BabelAR, an augmented-reality language-learning game designed to boost pupils' motivation and self-regulated, collaborative learning. These outputs were shared and refined through a series of multiplier events and workshops. VirtuLApp's tools remain freely available. The project was awarded second prize at the NUFFIC Europees Talenlabel (European Language Label awards) in 2021 for its contribution to innovative language education. The project's BabelAR game won Gold in the Digital Product category at the Henry van de Velde Awards 2022 and was nominated for the Belgian Game Awards 2021 (Best Non-Entertainment Title of the Year).
• Funding Agency
  • European Union
• Date From
  • 01/09/2018
• Date To
  • 31/12/2021

• Title
  • XCELING - (Towards Excellence in Applied Linguistics: Innovative Second Language Education in Egypt
• Summary
  • The XCELING project aimed to modernise foreign language education in Egypt by developing applied linguistics research, innovative teaching practices, and international collaboration between Egyptian and European universities. The project established six Language Innovation Centres across Egyptian partner universities, delivered staff development and doctoral training in applied linguistics, promoted ICT-enhanced language teaching, and co-created open-access multilingual language learning resources, including the 7Ling app, to support Arabic-speaking learners, migrants, and refugees. Through these activities, XCELING enhanced institutional capacity, fostered sustainable EU"Egypt academic partnerships, improved the quality of language teaching and research, and expanded access to inclusive, technology-enabled language learning resources with educational and societal impact.
• Funding Agency
  • European Union
• Date From
  • 15/10/2017
• Date To
  • 14/10/2021

• Title
  • E-LENGUA
• Summary
  • The E-LENGUA project led by the University of Salamanca in collaboration with the University of Coimbra, University of Poitiers, Heidelberg University, University of Bologna, Cairo University, and Trinity College Dublin. Its work packages focused on the integration of digital competencies into the curricular design of foreign language teaching, addressing a set of challenges posed by the use of ICT in language education across seven languages (English, Arabic, Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Portuguese). The team developed and tested a range of teaching methodologies responsive to learners' needs, with particular attention to accessibility for the visually impaired, deaf and hard of hearing learnings, and built an open-access repository of best practices for technology-enhanced foreign language teaching.
• Funding Agency
  • European Union
• Date From
  • 01-09-2015
• Date To
  • 31-08-2018

• Title
  • EUROMEC European Identity, Culture, Exchanges and Multilingualism
• Summary
  • European identity formation is identified as an overarching theme with three dimensions of more focused research (patterns of European identity and citizenship among students studying courses in the area of EU Studies eliminating the constraint of knowledge deficit and information about European affairs), identities in urban contexts (the European multilingual city) and the issue of emerging new European young researchers' identities (exchanges and doctoral studies - an international study of processes and outcomes in the EU). A core task of the network is to build knowledge and become a reference point for researchers in these EU-related themes. The target group of the JM Network are young researchers (doctorate students, potential doctorate students and young researchers who have obtained a PhD degree in the past 5 years). Their profile is not limited to EU Studies departments. The Network aims at involving doctorate students and young researchers from different scientific areas through the open calls for participation and through inviting doctorate students from other scientific fields. The Network will run 3 summer schools as well as a range of events (seminars, workshops, conferences and final conference). The co-teaching activities are developed with the view of enhancing academic exchanges and cooperation.
• Funding Agency
  • European Union
• Date From
  • 01-09-2014
• Date To
  • 31-08-2017

• Title
  • Investigating the Korean multilingual landscape.
• Summary
  • Visiting Researcher programme project which involved a field-based study of the Korean semiotic landscape in two locations in Seoul. The project was located within the field of linguistic landscape and took English and other European language borrowings as a principal unit of analysis. It investigated their usage in the visual public spaces of four key spheres: education, public/civic sphere, economic and community/private sphere. The findings of this project are published in two book chapters: Carson, L. (2014), An exploration of the roles of English in societal and individual multilingualism in Korea, in R. Bertoni (Ed.), and Carson, L. (2016), English fever: Problematising English language proficiency testing in South Korea, in M. O'Hagan & Q. Zhang (Eds.).
• Funding Agency
  • Academy of Korean Studies
• Date From
  • 25/06/2013
• Date To
  • 24/07/2013

• Title
  • Multilingualism in Northern British Columbia: People, Place and Belonging
• Summary
  • This visiting Faculty Research Program project examined multilingual policy and practices in Northern British Columbia, employing a mixed-methods research design, including archival research, investigation of linguistic landscape and ethnographic research. Conducted during my research sabbatical at the University of Northern British Columbia in 2012, the project gathered primary data on the connections and interaction between diverse language varieties and communities in the city of Prince George and surrounding area.
• Funding Agency
  • International Council for Canadian Studies
• Date From
  • 20/08/2012
• Date To
  • 19/11/2012

• Title
  • LUCIDE - Languages in Urban Contexts - Integration and Diversity for Europe
• Summary
  • LUCIDE was a large, multi-country Lifelong Learning Programme project that examined how multilingualism shapes contemporary European cities and how language policies and practices can support social cohesion, integration, and intercultural communication. The project aimed to develop a better understanding of urban multilingualism by bringing together researchers, universities, municipalities, and language organisations across Europe. Activities included comparative city reports on multilingual communities, primary research on language use and policy, stakeholder engagement, and the development of multilingual toolkits for sectors including education, healthcare, public services, business, and community life. The project"s impact included strengthening awareness of multilingualism as a social and economic resource, informing urban language policies, and creating transferable resources for practitioners and policymakers working with diverse communities.
• Funding Agency
  • European Union
• Date From
  • 01/12/2011
• Date To
  • 30/11/2014