Mandira Halder

Mandira Halder is a grant-funded post-doctoral researcher at the Helsinki Inequality Initiative, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki and principal investigator of a project on Swedish as alternate route to belonging for non-white migrants in Finland. Her PhD in educational sciences (University of Geneva) focused on teaching German in French-speaking Swiss primary schools.

Inclusion of migrant background pupils arriving in a Swedish minority context in Finland
This presentation highlights some findings from an ongoing research project concerning policy frameworks for Swedish as a second language and their effect on the sense of belonging among migrant-background pupils from outside Europe within a Swedish minority context in Finland. Swedish is Finland's second official language, and in the capital region, it is considered a minority language alongside Finnish, the majority official language. The findings offer perspectives from various stakeholders on policy frameworks for organising learning and teaching in Swedish as a second language, from the arrival of these pupils to their inclusion in a school setting where Finland's regional languages intersect with the pupils' minority languages, which are often marginalised.
 
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Tomasz Wicherkiewicz

Tomasz Wicherkiewicz is a Polish linguist who specializes in sociolinguistics, language policy and planning, as well as minority studies, with a special interest in endangered, minority and minorized, lesser-spoken, underresourced, and underresearched languages and their communities, in language revitalization and documentation, and in the minority language rights protection and research. His research also includes typologies and sociolinguistics of writing systems and their elements. He authored and led the project Poland's Linguistic Heritage - Documentation Database for Endangered Languages.

Languages in Competition? Immigration, Education, and Linguistic Diversity - Lessons (and Challenges) from Polish Schools
How Immigration Impacts Regional and Minority Languages in Secondary Education: How can the fostering of new language policies help to transform negative phenomena such as hate speech against minorities and the stigmatization of immigrants? How do these issues affect the situation of secondary education and educational (language) policies? Do foreign languages, regional and minority languages (RMLs), and migrant languages necessarily have to compete for space in the classroom? Lessons and challenges from Poland on the role of all languages in education. 
 
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António Bárbolo Alves

António Bárbolo Alves holds a BA in teaching Portuguese and French (University of Minho), an MA in teaching Portuguese language and literature from the same university and a Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Toulouse – Le Mirail (France). From 1990 to 1995, he participated in the MINERVA Project at the University of Minho, and from 1997 to 2003, he was a lecturer in Portuguese language and culture at the University of Nice – Sophia Antipolis. He received grants from the National Board of Scientific and Technological Research (JNICT, 1995) and from the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT, 2005–08). He is a secondary school teacher and a researcher at the Centro de Estudos em Letras at University of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro (UTAD, Portugal). His research focuses on Mirandese language and culture. He is a member of the Portuguese Linguistics Association, the Association Internationale pour la Défense des Langues et des Cultures Menacées (AIDLCM) and a corresponding member of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences.

Claudine Brohy

Claudine Brohy taught linguistics and German as a Foreign Language (DaF) at the bilingual University of Fribourg. Additionally, she worked in teacher education, and is interested in bilingual teaching, diglossia in a multilingual environment, efficient and beautiful teaching and learning materials, and language contact in general. She was also part of national and international working groups in the areas of language rights, minorities, language teaching, language policy, and multilingual (school) concepts, such as the Council of Europe and in university, cantonal, and national commissions.

Narrell Byrne

Narrell Byrne is a teacher of Irish, German, English as an Additional Language and has taught Irish in a multilingual setting where up to 50% of the learners were speakers of other languages. In addition, she has taught in Irish medium schools where the entire curriculum is taught through the medium of Irish.

Suzanne Dekker

Suzanne Dekker has been working at the Mercator European Research Centre since October 2023. Her PhD research at the Multilingualism and Literacy lectorate at NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences and the University of Groningen was about developing, implementing and evaluating multilingualism in Frisian primary schools. She worked as a researcher at the lectorate Multilingualism and Education of the University of Applied Sciences in Utrecht, where she was involved in projects on efficiently teaching English in primary schools, multilingualism and reading education, and professionalisation of news specialists. As a lecturer at the University of Groningen, she taught the subjects Language Variation: The Communicative Consequences, Language Planning and Policy, and Multilingualism and Education.

Johan Häggman, rapporteur

Johan Häggman has more than 14 years of experience in promoting minority languages and advising the European Union on language policy. He is currently the coordinator in Brussels of the Federal Union of European Nationalities (FUEN), the main organization in the defense of national minorities, nationalities and indigenous linguistic groups in Europe.

Maria Begoña Iturgaiz Rodriguez

Maria Begoña Iturgaiz Rodriguez works at the Institute for Euskara and language education, Basque Autonomous Community.

Anna Jungner-Nordgren – chair

Anna Jungner-Nordgren is the Senior Advisor International and Nordic Affairs at Folktinget: the Swedish Assembly of Finland. NPLD Chair since May 2025.

Brigitta Koncz

Brigitta Koncz is an English teacher at Ady Endre High School in Oradea, with expertise in minority education, multiculturalism, and intercultural education. Hungarian language education, the teaching of Romanian as a second language, and English as a foreign language for ethnic Hungarian students.

Aurelio La Torre

Senior Director at the Italian Presidency of the Council of Ministers (Prime Minister’s Office) – Department for European Affairs. He is currently responsible for various EU-related matters, including the Rule of Law and Fundamental Rights, with a particular focus on linguistic rights. An international lawyer with extensive experience in legal reforms and capacity building, he has coordinated several EU-funded projects in Eastern Europe to support countries in implementing key reforms for EU accession. His recent research focus on language rights, language policy and revitalization, regional languages, language education, and multilingualism. He is the author, among other works, of a draft bill for the protection of Italy’s linguistic heritage, as well as a Manifesto and an Action Plan for the promotion of regional languages. He speaks Italian, English, French, Romanian, Spanish, Portuguese, Sicilian, Interlingua and has studied several other languages, including Latin and Ancient Greek.

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Ramieza Mahdi

Ramieza Mahdi is vice president of the Swedish People's party in Finland. She is a city councillor in Vaasa, a member of Social and Health Board as well as being part of the Immigration Advice Committee and substitute-member of the Building Board and the Education and Teaching Board.

Cor van der Meer – chair

Cor van der Meer is an expert in the fields of multilingualism, regional and minority languages and language learning. Previously he worked as senior specialist in survey data-use and digital preservation in Amsterdam. Through the years he served as board member of a number of international organisations and is frequently presenting his work at conferences and seminars, in Europe and beyond.

Eva Vetter

Eva Vetter is a full Professor at the University of Vienna, affiliated with both the Department for Teacher Education and the Department of Linguistics. Research topics include multilingualism, teaching research, discourse analysis, language teaching and learning research, language contact and conflict research, Francophonie.