HaBilNet Travel Awards to attend GURT

At the suggestion of HaBilNet Advisory Board Member Lourdes Ortega HaBilNet is pleased to award HaBilNet Travel Awards in order to attend the Georgetown University Round Table, GURT 2020, on "Multilingualism: Global South and Global North Perspectives".

The awards go to two junior scholars, Sally Rachel Cook and Nishita Grace Isaac, whose respective papers contribute to HaBilNet's mission to support and stimulate scientific research into harmonious bilingualism.

Because GURT 2020 did not actually take place, the planned award ceremony was replaced by this little video featuring Lourdes Ortega and HaBilNet Director Annick De Houwer.

GURT 2020 took place virtually, via a private FaceBook page.

Nishita Grace Isaac contributed a powerpoint presentation on A Tribal Child's Schoolscape: From Politics to Pedagogy. You can find the abstract here.

Sally Rachel Cook contributed a video to explain more about her co-authored paper on The Healing Role of a LX in Survivors of Sexuality-Persecution. You can find the abstract here.

Together with Dr. Ortega, HaBilNet hopes that the travel award recipients will be able to still travel to Georgetown later this year to present their work in person.

What is GURT?

Every spring, the Department of Linguistics of Georgetown University hosts the Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics (GURT). This is a peer-reviewed conference that accepts researchers in Linguistics from around the world. A select number of papers from GURT are published in a conference proceedings. Topics vary from year to year.

This Is the Secret to Success in Raising a Bilingual Child

Want to know the secret to success in raising a child that is actively bilingual? Find out in this blog post by HaBilNet member and consultant Adam Beck.

HaBilNet3 – Let's Share some Posters!

The third HaBilNet Colloquium took place 4-6 June, 2025, in Donostia/San Sebastián, Spain. HaBilNet Director Annick De Houwer and HaBilNet Advisory Board Member Lourdes Ortega welcomed over 70 people to discuss the colloquium's theme "Bilinguals in Context" in several plenary sessions and poster presentations. Bilingual people and settings in relation to their well-being are central to HaBilNet and its colloquia. Check out 18 posters that participants kindly sent in to be shared.

Telling stories, writing bilingual picture books, and more adventures with the Book Pirates

The projects of the Book Pirates aim at enabling children and young people to experience literature creatively and independently. One of their numerous projects is about bilingual picture books written by children and for children.

Taking advantage of staying at home with your children during the COVID-19 crisis

Like so many other parents world wide, you are probably stuck at home with your children during the current COVID-19 crisis. It is a difficult time for everyone. Check out this blog article to learn how this may be also be a time of opportunity for your bilingual family.

Answers to the three most common parental questions on raising bilingual children

A HaBilNet consultation allows parents or other family members
to discuss specific questions and/or share their current situation. In this article we would like to share the three most frequently asked questions and outline the advice that HaBilNet consultants Janice Nakamura and Annick De Houwer provide in response.

Emergent multilingual literacy in early childhood education and care

This article is part of a series by HaBilNet, the Harmonious Bilingualism Network.
It considers research results about young children's bilingual language development and discusses how these results can be applied in early childhood education and care so that all children may benefit from harmonious bilingual development.

The HaBilNet Family Language Policies colloquium at GURT 2020

This colloquium brings together perspectives on family language policies from different parts of the world and from different disciplines. Check out its virtual format here (featuring Annick De Houwer, Michelle Mingyue Gu, Simona Montanari, Janice Nakamura, and Nikolay Slavkov).

Bilingual children do not start speaking later than monolingual ones

This article is part of a series by HaBilNet, the Harmonious Bilingualism Network. It considers research results about young children's bilingual language development and discusses how these results can be applied in early childhood education and care so that all children may benefit from harmonious bilingual development.

HaBilNet2 – HaBilNet's Second Colloquium Part II

This is Part II of the Blog post about HaBilNet's second Colloquium which was held in May (2022) in Frankfurt, Germany. 55 participants from around the world had a great time and found the colloquium truly inspiring. Here, you can read all about the posters which early career professionals showed at the colloquium.

Multilingualism fact check

In education, language competencies are undoubtedly key. However, multilingualism is repeatedly and erroneously cited as a risk factor for educational achievement.
In a "Fact check", Dr. Till Woerfel therefore attempted to compare established international research with current scientific findings from German-speaking countries in order to answer the most frequently and controversially discussed questions on this topic.

Emergent multilingual literacy in early childhood education and care

This article is part of a series by HaBilNet, the Harmonious Bilingualism Network.
It considers research results about young children's bilingual language development and discusses how these results can be applied in early childhood education and care so that all children may benefit from harmonious bilingual development.

HaBilNet2 – HaBilNet's Second Colloquium Part I

This past May (2022) HaBilNet organized its second Colloquium in Frankfurt, Germany. The 55 participants from around the world had a great time and found the colloquium truly inspiring. Read all about it in our blog article, divided into two parts: this first one about the colloquium as a whole.

Taking advantage of staying at home with your children during the COVID-19 crisis

Like so many other parents world wide, you are probably stuck at home with your children during the current COVID-19 crisis. It is a difficult time for everyone. Check out this blog article to learn how this may be also be a time of opportunity for your bilingual family.

The HaBilNet Family Language Policies colloquium at GURT 2020

This colloquium brings together perspectives on family language policies from different parts of the world and from different disciplines. Check out its virtual format here (featuring Annick De Houwer, Michelle Mingyue Gu, Simona Montanari, Janice Nakamura, and Nikolay Slavkov).

Do's and Don'ts for a Harmonious Multi-literacy Journey

When parents/carers are raising multilingual children, they often wish for their children to not only speak the home language, but also to be able to read and write it. The road towards multilingual literacy can be empowering and enriching, or frustrating and demoralizing. This article details the do's and don'ts for a harmonious multi-literacy journey that will help children confidently develop home language literacy skills while bonds between parents and children are strengthened.

Telling stories, writing bilingual picture books, and more adventures with the Book Pirates

The projects of the Book Pirates aim at enabling children and young people to experience literature creatively and independently. One of their numerous projects is about bilingual picture books written by children and for children.

Bilingual children do not start speaking later than monolingual ones

This article is part of a series by HaBilNet, the Harmonious Bilingualism Network. It considers research results about young children's bilingual language development and discusses how these results can be applied in early childhood education and care so that all children may benefit from harmonious bilingual development.

Storytelling for language maintenance and mental well-being

This blog article aims to address the mental well-being of bilinguals who suffer from a lack of space for using their first language(s). It discusses how a storytelling approach to language maintenance can be beneficial for improving mental well-being and draws on data collected during the research project. The main focus of this blog article is on the procedures used in the project.

The Need for a Language-Considerate Approach in Early Childhood Education

This article is part of a series by HaBilNet, the Harmonious Bilingualism Network. It considers research results about young children's bilingual language development and discusses how these results can be applied in early childhood education and care so that all children may benefit from harmonious bilingual development.

HaBilNet2 – HaBilNet's Second Colloquium Part II

This is Part II of the Blog post about HaBilNet's second Colloquium which was held in May (2022) in Frankfurt, Germany. 55 participants from around the world had a great time and found the colloquium truly inspiring. Here, you can read all about the posters which early career professionals showed at the colloquium.

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