On 10 December we had the visit of the researcher and collaborator Anik Nandi at the Chair. We took the opportunity to sign the collaboration agreement between our UNESCO Chair WLH and Woxsen University (India).

In the afternoon, he gave a talk on the language policies of India to the students of the Master's Degree in Teacher Training at the Alava Campus.

Through the agreement signed, we intend to open the way for joint projects and stays. Specifically, we will work with the Centre for Languages & Multicultural Communication of the University of Woxen to jointly carry out programmes, projects and/or activities of common interest in the field of linguistic diversity, language policies and multilingual education. Anik Nandi, currently director of this centre, has previously been a researcher in the UPV/EHU research group Elebilab thanks to a postdoctoral grant.

Nandi completed a postgraduate degree in linguistics in Galicia between 2008-2010 at the University of Santiago de Compostela. In 2017 he defended his PhD thesis at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh in the field of Sociolinguistics. Anik is a specialist in the areas of language policy, sociolinguistics of Indian minority languages and foreign language teaching.

The Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean organised the ‘International Seminar on Experiences in the Revitalisation of Indigenous Languages’ on 21 November in Santiago de Chile.

The event focused on experiences of language acquisition and strengthening through language immersion, as well as the political and institutional challenges for language revitalisation. Among the participants was his fellow professor, Ane Ortega, to talk about the experience of revitalising the Basque language.

You can watch the full recording of the seminar at the following YouTube link.

Issue 131 of the BAT Journal of Sociolinguistics is now available. The theme of this latest publication is sociolinguistic awareness in Education. 

In July 2024 the UEU (Udako Euskal Unibertsitatea - Basque Summer University) held the course ‘Sociolinguistic Education: sharing experiences for the future’ in Eibar. Based on that conference, the theme of the last issue of the journal was proposed. Among others, Chair member Ane Ortega also participated in the courses, and she is the author of the introduction to this issue.

REDS (Spanish Network for Sustainable Development) published a call last spring for information on inspiring projects linking culture and the Sustainable Development Goals.

Among the projects submitted, they have selected 10 to be published in a report. The rest have been collected in a digital repository and, among others, proposed by the Chair, they have added information on the Goal 18 for Linguistic and Cultural Diversity. In the following link you can see the rest of the initiatives.

On 21 February, International Mother Language Day, the UNESCO Chair of World Language Heritage and the Corporació Catalana de Mitjans Audiovisuals made an official presentation of the animations created jointly. The presentation was at 12:30 in the University Pavilion of the Alava Campus, as part of the Spring Welcome Days.

The product presented was a series of five animations based on folk tales from around the world, in both Catalan and Basque. The animations are available from 21 February on the Chair's website.