Welcome to the Bilingualism Centre

Located in the well-established bilingual community in the Welsh-English speaking area of North Wales, the research Centre, which is organized and administered by the Schools of Arts, Culture and Language, the School of Human and Behavioural Sciences and the School of Educational Sciences has an advantage in providing easy access to bilingual people and allows an unprecedented concentration of effort on Welsh-English bilinguals as well as offering a springboard into other bilingual and multilingual communities.

Research in the field of bilingualism (and multilingualism) draws on several disciplines, including linguistics, psychology, neuroscience, education, sociology, economics, and political science. Recent years have seen an explosion of research in this area, as a result of which our understanding of the nature of the individual bilingual/multilingual mind, of language use and development, of identity construction and (re)construction as well as of the bilingual and multilingual community, is making rapid progress.

Centre Director

Centre Focus

The main theoretical focus of the Centre for Research on Bilingualism is the nature of the relationship between the two languages of bilingual speakers in bilingual communities. The main practical focus will be the implications of the findings for bilingual language policy, planning and implementation. The Centre also supports, explores and contributes to our knowledge of multilingual speakers and multilingual communities within all of the aforementioned areas.

Research in the field of bilingualism (and multilingualism) draws on several disciplines, including linguistics, psychology, neuroscience, education, sociology, economics, and political science. Recent years have seen an explosion of research in this area, as a result of which our understanding of the nature of the individual bilingual mind, of language use and development, of identity construction, as well as of the bilingual and multilingual community, is making rapid progress.

New neuroscientific and experimental studies have revealed far more processing interaction between the languages of a bilingual (and multilingualism) than was previously suspected, even when a speaker is only using one language at a time. Recent developmental studies have emphasised the positive cognitive effects of knowing more than one language. Work by linguists shows that the use of two or more languages in the same conversation does not happen at random but is constrained in ways that we are just beginning to understand. Finally, observational and ethnographic research is now beginning to provide a holistic perspective on the use of two or more languages and literacies in interaction at home and school. The Centre for Research on Bilingualism constitutes an unprecedented initiative to move forward in all these areas by combining several different methodological approaches including neuroscientific, experimental, and observational procedures.

Located in the well-established bilingual community in the Welsh-English speaking area of North Wales, the  research Centre has  an advantage in providing easy access to bilingual people and will allow an unprecedented concentration of effort on Welsh-English bilinguals as well as offering a springboard into other bilingual and multilingual communities.

The main objectives of the Centre are:

  1. to increase the understanding of bilingualism (and multilingualism) world-wide, as regards both the individual and the community;
  2. to build research capacity on bilingualism (and multilingualism) in the UK by providing vibrant  interdisciplinary ‘laboratory’ for the study of bilingualism (and multilingualism) in action which aims to serve as a platform for interactions between bilingualism experts and junior researchers;
  3. to develop strong bidirectional links with practitioners and policy makers concerned with bilingualism (and multilingualism) in the UK, to ground research and theory in the needs of those users and ensure dissemination of research findings;
  4. to develop new collaborations between researchers on bilingualism and multilingualism at Bangor University and bilingualism and multilingualism experts worldwide.