Elizabeth J. Erling

Elizabeth Erling, PhD (Beth) is the principal investigator of the Udele project and Elise-Richter Senior Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Vienna, Austria. She is also Professor of ELT Research & Methodology at the University of Education Upper Austria (PH Oberösterreich) in Linz, where she is involved in the professional development of English language teachers in Austria. Beth is a specialist in language teaching and teacher education, with over 20 years of experience in ELT. She has taught at the University of Vienna, the University of Graz, the Open University, UK and the Freie Universität Berlin. Her research investigates the potential contribution of (English) language education to social justice, and seeks solutions that improve students' experience of learning languages at school. She has worked as an educational researcher and teacher educator on projects in the UK, Germany, Bangladesh, Korea, India and Ghana. At the moment, the focus of her work is using multilingualism as a resource for English learning in Austrian middle schools.

Miriam Weidl

Miriam Weidl, PhD (Mia) is a Postdoctoral researcher in the Udele project, as well as a lecturer on multilingualism. Prior to this, she worked as a Postdoctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki, Finland, where she conducted research on small-scale multilingualism in Senegal and is a founding member of the LILIEMA association (www.liliema.com). LILIEMA is dedicated to advancing language independent literacies for inclusive education for all. In the project, Mia was responsible for teacher training and materials development, and explored multilingual repertoires and language usage in classrooms. Her investigations were approached from ethnographic sociolinguistic and anthropological perspectives. Her doctoral thesis, undertaken at SOAS, University of London, and conducted as as part of the Crossroads project, focused on examining the role of Wolof, the most prevalent language in Senegal, within the multilingual repertoires of individuals residing in the village of Djibonker (soascrossroads.org). Mia is bringing fresh perspectives to the Udele project through her sociolinguistic understandings of multilingualism, expertise in participatory methodologies and experience of supporting learning through linguistic awareness and self-confidence developed through research in West Africa.