Faculty: Faculty of Arts and Philosophy

  • Alieke Broidioi

    I am a PhD researcher at the Department of Translation, Interpreting and Communication (VTC). My doctoral research focuses on accent bias in recruitment in Flanders. I study how both regional and foreign accents influence the evaluation of candidates during hiring processes. I am not only interested in whether candidates with an accent are less likely to be hired, but also in the underlying mechanisms and perceptions that may explain these differences.

  • Sofie Beunen

    Sofie Beunen is a Baekeland PhD fellow, conducting her research in collaboration with the Centre for Diversity and Learning and TAJO vzw. Her PhD focuses on the study-choice process of disadvantaged youth during the transition from primary to secondary education. Using a longitudinal, quasi-experimental mixed-methods design, the project aims to develop a scientifically grounded impactmodel for interventions that strengthen the study-choice process of disadvantaged students and help reduce social inequality in Flemish educational trajectories.After obtaining her Master’s degree in Sociology, Sofie gained experience in the fields of education and diversity. As a researcher, she has previously examined what cultural participation means for people from diverse ethnic backgrounds and explored teachers’ perceptions of diversity. In applied research projects, she experimented with learning motivation among disadvantaged youth and language-oriented partnerships between schools and parents.

  • Zahra El Morabit Sghire

    Zahra El Morabit Sghire earned her Master’s degrees in Language and Literature (English) and (French-Spanish), both summa cum laude, from Ghent University in 2023 and 2022, respectively. In 2023, Zahra began her PhD research on literature written by Moroccan migrants in Catalonia, supported by funding from the FWO. Her research examines how Generation 1.5 authors address the intersections of identity, mental health, and migration in their works.Zahra has presented her research at several international conferences, including the “Congreso Escrituras desterritorializadas: Literatura femenina y migración hispanoamericana en Europa,” organized by the Universidad del País Vasco (Spain) and KU Leuven (Belgium) in 2021. She has also been a visiting scholar at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili.Her broader research interests include intersectional identity, postcolonialism, and the representation of marginalized voices in European literature. Zahra is a member of CESSMIR, where she collaborates with scholars on interdisciplinary approaches to migration literature. She has published her work in Revista Letral and is preparing a paper on the literary representations of intergenerational relationships.

  • Marco Formisano

    Professor of Latin Literature in the Department of Literary Studies, a senior member of the GCLA (Ghent Center for Late Antiquity) and a member of the Doctoral School “Migrazioni, Differenze, Giustizia Sociale” at the University of Palermo, Italy. Before coming to Ghent I held positions and fellowships in France, Italy, Germany, the UK and the USA, experiences which have enabled me to appreciate a range of academic systems, languages and styles of thought and have made me particularly sensitive to topics related to intellectual migration. In my current book project, tentatively entitled “The Nomadic Alternative: Another Way of Looking at Classics and Beyond,” I approach the interpretation of ancient and modern literature from a nomadic perspective which is conceived as fundamentally different from the conscious and unconscious sedentarism broadly characterizing scholarly inquiry. This project is also inspired by many visits to Brazil, whose history, culture and language distinctly influence my current work.

  • Juliette Michaud

    Juliette is currently enrolled in a joint PhD at Ghent University and ULB in Brussels. She obtained her Master’s Degree in Multidisciplinary Translation from the Institut supérieur de traducteurs-interprètes (formely ISTI, now attached to ULB), with the language combination English-Arabic-French, as well as a second Bachelor adding Spanish. During her Master’s degree and onwards, she started working as a public service interpreter in different structures in Brussels. After several years on the field of interpretation and teenagers literacy, she started a PhD under the supervision of Prof. Dr. K. Maryns and Prof. Dr. J. Jaspers in 2025. Her project focuses on linguistic accommodation strategies amongst Arabic interpreters and their interlocutors, and builds on a participatory methodology involving interpreters as well as providers and users of interpreting services.

  • Laura Robaey

    Laura Robaey is a doctoral researcher at Ghent University, in the German section of the Department of Translation, Interpreting and Communication. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Applied Linguistics and a Master’s degree in Interpreting (2022, Ghent University) and Teaching (2025, Ghent University). Since 2023, she has been researching gender-fair language in multilingual service provision contexts. In 2024, she received funding from the Research Foundation Flanders for the project “Gender-fair language use in interpreted interaction between service providers and gender-diverse persons”. Her research investigates how interpreted encounters shape the expression and negotiation of identity in intercultural communication. Her research interests include multilingualism, dialogue interpreting, and language as a practice of social integration.

  • Anthe Baele

    Anthe Baele is a historian and FWO doctoral student at the Department of History at Ghent University. After obtaining a master’s degree in History at Ghent University, she completed an International Advanced Master’s degree in Cultural Anthropology and Development Studies at KU Leuven. Her research focuses on the role of history in relation to the metaphorical ‘other’, with particular attention to the reception of historical cultures. Integration courses form the central field of research. Her current project compares the role of history in integration policy in Flanders and the Netherlands. Specifically, she investigates both the historical development of integration policy in both countries and its practice through participatory observations in integration courses. In this way, she studies how the policy takes shape in the classroom and how both teachers and newcomers relate to the historical content offered.

  • Wendelien Vantieghem

    Wendelien is assistant professor at the Centre for Diversity & Learning (Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Arts & Philosophy-Ghent University). Her work focuses on inequity in education based on gender, sexual orientation, multilingualism, socio-economic background, ethnicity, and disability, as well as teachers’ attitudes and competences with regards to diversity.During her post-doctoral work, Wendelien analysed diversity, (in)equity and inclusion from a range of perspectives. This included work on the “Diversity Barometer for Education” and “Diversity Screening for Education” at the Center for Diversity and Learning. She was also research coordinator of the “Potential-Power to teach all!”-project at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (faculty of Psychology & Educational Sciences), post-doctoral assistent at the research unit Equity in Health (Department of Public Health & Primary Care-UGent), and visiting professor for the course “”Diversity & inclusion in educational settings”” at VUB.

  • Sarah Van Hoof

    Sarah Van Hoof is associate professor of Dutch and multilingual communication. Her research is situated in the domain of sociolinguistics. Central themes in her work are language ideology and language politics in postwar and present-day Flanders, language policy and practices in public institutions and the role of language in the employment of non-Dutch-speaking newcomers.

  • Renata Enghels

    Renata Enghels is appointed as a professor of Hispanic and Contrastive Romance linguistics at Ghent University, and applies corpus research within a functional and cognitive perspective. She is particularly interested in the linguistic outcomes of phenomena of language and culture contact as a result of migration. In this respect she focusses on the language (including multilingualism and codeswitching), identity and social position of Hispanics, in the US and other regions. She is spokesperson of the interuniversity research group CROS, and is currently directing PhD research in the domains of the grammar of codeswitching and the linguistic representation of (Latin-American) migration in the media.

  • Michael Meeuwis

    Michael Meeuwis (°1968) is professor at the department of African Languages and Cultures at Ghent University. He received his Ph.D. in 1997 at the University of Antwerp with a sociolinguistic-ethnographic study of the languages used by the Congolese in Belgium and Flanders in particular. His areas of interest include the social, anthropological and sociolinguistic ontologies of the Congolese diaspora, including South-North but also South-South (within Africa) migration patterns; the role of the Congolese language Lingala in and for Congolese communities abroad; the history of Lingala; language policy in the DRC; discourse analysis in the context of migration; and others. He is a member of ‘Babil’, Fedasil’s expert panel for language and communication in reception centers in Belgium and extends his expertise to refugee organizations and services in several European countries. For his Lingala classes at Ghent University, he closely collaborates with Belgians of Congolese origin.

  • Katrijn Maryns

    I am associate professor in the Department of Translation, Interpreting and Communication My linguistic-ethnographic research examines multilingual practices and linguistic inequality in institutional contexts of asylum and migration. I am the author of ‘The asylum speaker: Language in the Belgian asylum procedure’ (Routledge 2006) and co-editor of the book series ‘Translation, Interpreting and Social Justice in a Globalised World’ (Multilingual Matters). I am supervising several projects on language and migration, including research on multilingual communication between immigration lawyers and their refugee clients, on migrants and refugees with a linguistically vulnerable profile (speakers of lesser diffused languages, low literacies), on video-remote language assistance for migrants and refugees and on the multilingual communication between unaccompanied refugee minors and their legal guardian.

  • July De Wilde

    July DE WILDE is associate professor in the Department of Translation, Interpreting and Communication at Ghent University, Belgium. Her research focuses on multilingualism, intercultural communication in migration contexts, public service interpreting and the use of digital / non-digital tools as communication support during face-to-face interactions. She is particulalry interested in the exploration and assessment of the possibilities and (dis)advantages of a wide range of language support strategies that facilitate the communication between public service providers and culturally/linguistically diverse speakers.

  • Chloé Lybaert

    I am an Assistant Professor of Dutch as a Second Language in the Department of Translation, Interpreting and Communication. My research can be situated in the field of (developmental) sociolinguistics. In my PhD I studied linguistic laypersons’ perceptions and attitudes towards language variation in Flanders, with a focus on Colloquial Dutch (‘tussentaal’). For my PhD I only worked with native speakers of Dutch. As a postdoctoral researcher, I started to focus more on Dutch spoken by (adult) L2 speakers. I am interested in their experiences with learning and speaking Dutch in Flanders, and in the influence of Colloquial Dutch on their language learning process. In addition, I remain interested in attitudes and perceptions towards language use and variation, but nowadays I mainly focus on the effect of non-native accents, non-standard linguistic variation and ethnicity on attitudes towards speakers.

  • An Van Raemdonck

    An is a social anthropologist and Arabist with extensive fieldwork experience in the Middle East and Belgium. Her research interests include contemporary social and cultural debates that revolve around globalization, diversity, identity, gender and religion/secularism. She holds a PhD in Comparative Science of Cultures from Ghent University (2016) and was guest professor at the Department of Middle East Studies (2017-2018). Her doctoral research investigated campaigns against Female Genital Cutting in Egypt in relation to religion. An worked in a collaborative anthropological research project on the shifting meanings and contexts of early marriage and pregnancy among Syrian refugees in Jordan (VU Amsterdam, NWO) and a comparative European project on Islamophobia and radicalisation in Belgium (Bilgi, EUI – ERC). She currently investigates Islamic ethics and conviviality in Western superdiverse societies. She is co-editor in chief of the Journal of Diversity and Gender Studies (DiGeSt).

  • Bart Defrancq

    Graduated as a Romance philologist in 1991, I successfully defended my PhD in 2002 in linguistics. In 2007 I moved to translation and interpreting studies. My research focusses on interpreting modes and interpreter-mediated forms of interaction in international institutions, in courts and police stations. I also investigate the impact of and interaction of interpreters with new interpreting technologies. My affiliation with CESSMIR stems from the research I carry out on police interpreting, where migration plays an important role.

  • Ella van Hest

    Ella van Hest is a postdoctoral research associate at the Department of Translation, Interpreting and Communication, where she is a member of the MULTIPLES research group. Her research interests include language and migration, multilingual communication, (non-professional) interpreting, and language policy. For her PhD project she conducted a linguistic ethnography on language diversity at an abortion clinic. Previous research (MA level) focused on the effects of Flemish language and integration policy on adult newcomers.

  • Lisa Maria Franke

    Lisa Maria Franke is research professor in Islamic Studies at Ghent University in the Department of Languages and Cultures. Her research and teaching focus on the social and intellectual history of Islam and being Muslim in the modern Middle East. Before joining Ghent University in 2023, she worked as assistant professor at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Göttingen on individual religiosities and non-conformist perspectives in Alexandria as part of the ERC Advanced Grant “Private Pieties”. She received her PhD in Arabic Studies in 2011 from the University of Leipzig. In this project, she conducted research on martyrdom, gender constructions and social discourses in Palestine. Subsequently, at the University of Cologne, she studied colloquial poetry and the religious, social and political content negotiated therein in the course of the Egyptian revolution of 2011, as well as meaningful symbolism in modern interpretations of the afterlife. In 2022, she held the professorship (interim) for Islamic Studies (Arabic) at Heidelberg University. Her research interests include everyday history, eschatology, faith and identity, discourse analysis and gender studies; individuality, religious transformation processes and social dynamics; modern Arabic literature; language as a form of mediation in various text forms.

  • Simon O’Donovan

    I am a doctoral researcher at the Department of Translation, Interpreting, and Communication, and also part of the MULTIPLES research group. I graduated from my Masters in Applied Linguistics at UCL/ IOE (London) in 2020. In my doctoral research I am investigating the on/off-line discourses of being/ being made and being from here/ not being from here in the Belgian reception network.

  • Shauny Seynhaeve

    Shauny Seynhaeve is a PhD student at the department of Translation, Interpreting and Communication at Ghent University. She holds a Master’s degree in English and Dutch Linguistics and Literature and an additional Master’s degree in language teaching. Since October 2020 she is working on a research project about the educational and interactional reality of regular secondary education for Newly Arrived Migrant Students.

  • Sari Goukens

    Sari Goukens is a doctoral researcher currently working on a joint PhD project at the University of Antwerp and Ghent University. She aims to research the influence of interpreters on the entextualisation process during sham marriage investigations in Flanders, looking into both municipal and police investigations. She has previously worked on a Fedasil National Project at the Department of Translation, Interpreting and Communication (UGent), aiming to evaluate the digital competencies and needs of asylum seekers in Belgium. She studied at Ghent University’s Department of Translation, Interpreting and Communication, and has obtained a BA in Applied Linguistics and an MA in Interpreting (Dutch, English and Turkish), including a certificate for sworn interpreting.

  • Mira Wyns

    I’m a PhD researcher at the Department of Translation, Interpreting and Communication (VTC). I conduct research in the field of accent bias, more specifically in Flemish secondary and higher education. I investigate whether pupils and students feel discriminated against because of their accent, and whether teachers and lecturers underestimate them on the basis of their accent.

  • Naïma Lafrarchi

    Naïma Lafrarchi holds a law degree, Master of Science in Instructional and Educational Science, and a Master in Educational Science specialisation ‘Curriculum Development and Innovation’. Lafrarchi also worked at the Knowledge Centre of the Higher Institute for Family Sciences of Odisee University College (Brussels) as a project supervisor and were she conducted research regarding religious ideals of Flemish Muslim parents and Muslim youngers in Belgium/Flanders (Odisee). She is a former lecturer in the Master’s programme in Islamic Theology and Religious Studies (KU Leuven). Her first book ‘Does religion makes a difference?’ is launched in 2017 in presence of the Minister of Education, Hilde Crevits, as well as national and international experts. Currently, she is working on a research project which aims to develop a didactical-pedagogical tool to support history teachers in Flemish secondary education to deal with controversial and historical sensitive topics.

  • Ophélie Mercier

    Ophélie Mercier is a PhD Student in the department of Languages and Cultures. She graduated from Sciences Po Rennes and obtained a master in Conflict, Violence and Development at SOAS. Her first resaerch experience explored theatre as a form of resistance in Palestine, doing ethnographic fieldwork with the Freedom Theatre. She worked in Cairo from 2013-16 as a street clown performer and social theatre practitioner with the collective Outa Hamra. Back in France, she coordinated for four years the work of the organisation Caravan, an international network for youth and social circus. In her PhD she is exploring life trajoectories of Egyptian artists residing in Europe, focusing on the reconfigurations of their artistic practices and looking at the transnational dynamics of the production and distribution of their art works.

  • Sara Delva

    Sara Delva is an assistant in the Department of Translation, Interpretation and Communication and a member of the MULTIPLES research group. Her doctoral research deals with the right to language assistance for foreign-language speakers involved in criminal proceedings. More specifically, she investigates how international legislation on the right to an interpreter and the right to translation is concretely applied by Belgian police forces, public prosecutors’ offices and courts. Besides her research activities, she also teaches in the Bachelor of Applied Linguistics and the Master of Translation.

  • Laurence De Backer

    Laurence obtained her Master’s in Spanish and English Linguistics and Literature at Ghent University, and is finishing a second Master’s in Social and Cultural Anthropology at KU Leuven. After being granted an FWO Fellowship in 2021, she joined the Linguistics department and started her PhD research under the joint supervision of Prof. Dr. R. Enghels and Prof. Dr. G. Jacobs. Her project tackles the persuasive function of metaphorical language in news media communication, with as case study the topic of Latin American migration in the US written press. Innovatively, Laurence adopts a holistic approach to pursue this subject, complementing a linguistic focus on media texts with careful attention to news production and reception. Laurence’s areas of interest straddle Linguistics and Anthropology, and include metaphor theory, mediated communication, im/mobility, (de)colonization and futurities, with main research foci on the US and Latin-America as well as on contemporary artivism.

  • Laura Schildt

    Laura Schildt is a postdoctoral researcher with expertise in high-stakes language tests and policymaking in the immigration context. She holds a PhD in Applied Linguistics from the University of Ghent, an MSc in Applied Linguistics at the University of Oxford and a MA in Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (US).

  • Marie Jacobs

    Marie Jacobs is a post-doctoral researcher in the field of sociolinguistics. Next to a dedicated CESSMIR member, she is also part of the MULTIPLES Research Centre for Multilingual Practices and Language Learning in Society. Her doctoral dissertation presented a linguistic ethnography of the role of language in legal assistance to asylum seekers. She has published in international journals such as Language in Society, Journal of Pragmatics and Multilingua. Her research interests concern the role of language in settings of asylum and migration, the discursive dynamics of institutional encounters and the methodological intricacies of conducting qualitative research in superdiverse contexts.

  • Marieke Vanbuel

    Marieke Vanbuel is a postdoctoral researcher of FWO Flanders attached to the research group MULTIPLES of the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy of UGent, and to the research group Educational Effectiveness and Evaluation of the Department of Educational Studies at KU Leuven. Her research focuses on language policy, second language acquisition and educational effectiveness. She has experience with research in contexts ranging from primary education to adult education.

  • Lotte Remue

    Lotte Remue is a doctoral researcher at the Department of Translation, Interpreting and Communication, where she graduated as an interpreter Dutch-French-English in 2022. Her PhD focuses on the multilingual resources and strategies employed in the communication between unaccompanied refugee minors and their legal guardians.

  • Emma Maes

    Emma Maes is a PhD researcher at the Department of Translation, Interpreting and Communication and a member of the research group MULTIPLES. She conducts research in the field of Second Language Acquisition(SLA) and focuses on the learning process of adult migrant learners of Dutch (NT2) who have limited or interrupted formal education. Her doctoral research investigates in particular which types of feedback – implicit or explicit – lead to measurable learning gains for this population. In addition, her project will validate some commonly used measurement instruments in the field of SLA, thereby focusing on the possible construct bias these measurement instruments may pose for learners with limited formal education or literacy skills.

  • Elisa Robbe

    In 2019, I graduated at as a Master of Arts in Interpreting (Dutch-Eng-Spanish), after which I continued a Master of Science in Conflict & Development Studies. These two masters gave me the tools to prepare a research application on migration in the context of transit in Mexico. After working with the NGO Oxfam Belgium at the education and campaigns department, I was able to start a PhD in 2023 with the Spanish section of the department of Translation, Interpreting & Communication at Ghent University, where I graduated in 2019. My interests lie at the intersections of language, (digital) communication, solidarity and migration.

  • Jente De Coninck

    Jente De Coninck is a PhD researcher at the Centre for Diversity & Learning (Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Arts & Philosophy – Ghent University) under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Wendelien Vantieghem. Jente received his Bachelor’s degree in Social Work at the AP Hogeschool in 2019 and obtained his Master’s degree in Sociology at the University of Antwerp in 2022, with specialization in sociology of inequality and sociology of health and wellbeing. His PhD research focuses on diversity and inclusion in higher education. The main aim of this research project is an intersectional analysis of in- and excluding mechanisms in higher education for ethnic minority students and those from socio-economically vulnerable groups. During this project, he will investigate barriers & support-systems within higher education in a comprehensive way. To do so, two perspectives are employed: the agency perspective and the system perspective.

  • Dries Cavents

    Dries started his academic career studying Applied Linguistics at the KU Leuven in Antwerp, with the language combination English, Italian and French. After two years in Belgium, he left for Italy for a year, where he completed his Bachelor’s degree at the Università degli Studi di Trieste. Back in Belgium, he started the Master’s in Interpreting, with the same language combination, also at the KU Leuven. After having obtained his Master’s degree, he still had not had enough of interpreting, so he started the Postgraduate Course in Conference Interpreting in Brussels to learn all the tricks of the trade. At the end of this very practically-oriented course, he wanted to go back to more academic pursuits and decided to start an interpreting doctorate at Ghent University. So, currently he is working on a project that investigates how interpreters deal with politeness within interpreter-mediated conversations and where the differences between online and face-to-face conversations lie.