The UA German Studies Department will host the international graduate student workshop/symposium “Multilingualism in a globalized world” November 7-11, 2022. The Workshop is organized and led by Prof. Nicole Marx (Cologne) und Prof. Peter Ecke (Arizona). The event is part of a DAAD-funded partnership of Germanist departments (Germanistische Institutspartnerschaften, GIP) "Diversifying German Studies" between the Universität zu Köln, the University of Arizona, University of California, Berkeley and Yale University. In addition, students from the Universidad de Guadalajara, Mexico, plan to participate.
During the one-week event, participants will learn about empirical research methods to investigate multilingualism, explore doctoral research in progress, and discuss new research project proposals from students at US and German universities. For the research project proposals, the students develop (together with their instructors) a research design, which will then be presented and discussed during the workshop. The students formulate a specific research question, choose a research method, work out a research design and plan the steps of data collection, analysis, and interpretation.
In addition, workshop participants will visit a multilingual school, the International School of Tucson, discuss multilingualism research opportunities in schools in Germany and the US, the use of quantitative research methodology including statistics, and explore scholarship and grant options to fund research projects into multilingualism. At the end of the workshop, participants will hike in the Sonoran Desert and visit a historic Catholic Mission on the Tohona O’odham reservation. The workshop program can be found under Events on the Department Webpage and in the attached PDF document.
The organizers hope that the workshop will help create new contacts, networks, and friendships that will further intensify collaboration between the participating universities in Germany, the US and Mexico.