A FWF funded project at University of Vienna, 2022 – 2026
Project Team & Partners
Elizabeth J. Erling, PhD
Elizabeth Erling (Beth) is the principal investigator of the Udele project and Elise-Richter Senior Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Vienna, Austria. She is also Professor of ELT Research & Methodology at the University of Education Upper Austria (PH Oberösterreich) in Linz, where she is involved in the professional development of English language teachers in Austria. Beth is a specialist in language teaching and teacher education, with over 20 years of experience in ELT. She has taught at the University of Vienna, the University of Graz, the Open University, UK and the Freie Universität Berlin. Her research investigates the potential contribution of (English) language education to social justice, and seeks solutions that improve students’ experience of learning languages at school. She has worked as an educational researcher and teacher educator on projects in the UK, Germany, Bangladesh, Korea, India and Ghana. At the moment, the focus of her work is using multilingualism as a resource for English learning in Austrian middle schools.
Miriam Weidl, PhD
Miriam Weidl (Mia) is a Postdoctoral researcher and Co-I in the Udele project, as well as a lecturer on multilingualism at the University of Vienna, Austria. Prior to this, she worked as a Postdoctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki, Finland, where she conducted research on small-scale multilingualism in Senegal and is a founding member of the LILIEMA association (www.liliema.com). Her investigations were approached from ethnographic sociolinguistic and anthropological perspectives. Her doctoral thesis, undertaken at SOAS, University of London, and conducted as part of the Crossroads project, focused on examining the role of Wolof, the most prevalent language in Senegal, within the multilingual repertoires of individuals residing in the village of Djibonker (soascrossroads.org). Mia is bringing fresh perspectives to the Udele project through her sociolinguistic understandings of multilingualism, expertise in participatory methodologies and experience of supporting learning through linguistic awareness and self-confidence developed through research in West Africa.
Research Assistants
Anita Ghoreshi, BEd
Anita is pursuing her MEd degree (English and French) and MA degree in Anglophone Literatures and Cultures at the University of Vienna. During her studies, Anita has developed a strong interest in multilingualism and seeks to study its effects in the classroom, as well as the potential implications it has on the struggle towards social justice. In 2023, Anita became an invaluable addition to Udele as a research assistant, conducting multilingual interviews in English, German, Dari and Farsi, handling transcriptions and translations, and contributing group discussions.
Amina Račević
Amina is pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Education studying German and History/Political Education at the University of Vienna. She is particularly interested in the role of multilingualism within the Austrian education system in relation to promoting educational equity. In her Bachelor’s thesis, she investigated the identity constructs of multilingual postmigrant students in Vienna. Since 2023, Amina has worked as a research assistant in the Udele Team, where she is involved in conducting, transcribing, and translating interviews in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, German and English. Additionally, she contributes to managing the project’s website and participates in school workshops and other team events.
Mbarka Romdhane
Mbarka Romdhane graduated from university as a software engineer. As a mother of two bilingual children, multilingualism is her quotidian. After moving to Austria, she was fascinated by the multicultural and multilingual Viennese society while also witnessing the challenges it creates. In 2022 she joined the Udele team as a research assistant to interview and translate from English to Arabic, hoping to help multilingual students raise their voices and better express their needs and identities.
Nayyab Kanwal Rana, BEd
Nayyab is currently pursuing her MEd degree (English and German) at the University of Vienna. Having a migration background herself, she empathizes with children and adults who face language barriers in Austria. For this reason, she values multilingualism and views diverse linguistic repertoires as strengths rather than weaknesses. By utilizing these resources in school lessons, she hopes to support her students’ journey towards embracing their own linguistic diversity as a precious asset. Nayyab joined Udele in 2023 and supports the project by conducting interviews, providing translations in Urdu, Punjabi, Hindi, English and German, and facilitating school workshops.
Kübra Kilinç
Kübra is a student of English and Biology at the University of Vienna pursuing a career as a secondary school teacher. Born in Turkey, she moved to Vienna at the age of one, where she grew up and went to school. As a multilingual, Kübra became interested in using multilingualism as a resource for learning through a university course with Erling, and wrote her Bachelor’s thesis on this topic. Kübra joined Udele in 2023 as a research assistant, transcriber, and translator, utilizing Turkish, English, and German.
Partners
Günes Yildiz, BA, BEd, MA
Having previously studied Politics (BA) and International Law (MA) at SOAS (University of London) and worked in the field of media and NGOs, Günes is a second-career English teacher in a highly diverse middle school, who is pursuing her Master in Education for English and History at the University of Vienna. Being multilingual herself, Günes is committed to using students’ multilingualism as a resource in her classroom. She was instrumental in setting up the Udele project and worked with the Udele team on an action research cycle involving developing and trialing multilingual materials in her classroom.
Franziska Haberler, MA
During her Master in English, German as a Foreign/Second Language and Texttechnology, Franziska spent some terms abroad in Santiago de Chile and Brussels. She then moved to Berlin to start on her PhD which she hasn’t finished yet due to her four children that might have had more urgent needs. She then worked in Berlin, Graz and Zürich mainly with refugees and expats in second language acquisition before she left land altogether to circumnavigate on a catamaran with her family from 2015-2019. When she came back she started as a teacher at a Middleschool in Vienna. She also writes for Schulgschichtn.com and develops AI learning units for lörn.at. Due to her travels her children have attended school in different countries like Jamaica, Ecuador and Thailand. Her view on multilingualism in the classroom is based on her own experiences and expectations.
Kornelia Snizek
Kornelia, born in Hungary in 1977, graduated from the University of Miskolc’s Faculty of Humanities with a degree in English in 1998. Following her graduation, she spent three years teaching at a primary school, collaborating with the British Council. In 2001, Kornelia married her Austrian husband and relocated to Austria. Initially unable to teach due to her diploma not being recognized, she worked at the airport before becoming a regional representative for a Spanish company. Her son was born in 2004. In 2011, Kornelia successfully had her diploma recognized and completed an additional course at the Vienna College of Education. For the past 11 years, she has been teaching English in Vienna.
Johanna Scollard
Johanna Scollard is a teacher of English and other subjects in a Viennese Middle School. She studied English and History at the University of Vienna. One of her favorite aspects about teaching is to be surrounded by so many children with diverse backgrounds and languages.
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