Department: Department of Linguistics

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.