Multilingualism in Society and Education as the Driving Force for the Work of ECSPM
Guðrún Gísladóttir (ECSPM)
Abstract
The aim of this brief presentation is to inform the conference participants about the nature and role of the European Civil Society Platform for Multilingualism (ECSPM), how it has developed following its launch by the European Commission in 2009, how it fulfils its mission with research, political action, academic events, and project work by collaborating with its member associations, networks and research centres that represent more than 200 institutions concerned with language rights, language education and the use of languages in society.
Bio
Guðrún Gísladóttir is the General Secretary of ECSPM and a member of its Executive Committee. Multilingualism is both an aim but also praxis for her as she is a polyglot always keen on learning new languages that she tries to use by invariably employing her plurilingual repertoire. In 2021 she published an article entitled “Languages as Ways of Being: The Linguistic Biography of a Nordic Nomad”, which appeared in: Aronin, L., & Vetter, E. (eds) Dominant Language Constellations Approach in Education and Language Acquisition (Springer), in which she talks about her way of living with languages. The institution she represents in ECSPM is European Artists’ Rights.