Dates

04.10.2020 / 15:00

Information

About the jungle of languages, thinking, movements and scientific knowledge. The lecturer will be present online.

In these of two consecutive lectures, we will focus on some prejudices and myths that bilingual or multilingual people often encounter. Whether switching between languages is said to be a sign of language entanglement in the brain, or because some languages are said to be easier for learning than others, we will look at this topic in terms of scientific knowledge and facts. In this way, we learn that little of what we are convinced is actually true.

The lecture is part of the Babel Laboratory.

Prof. Dr. Barbara Mertins (* 1974) grew up in Prague, where she began studying German and Czech studies at FFUK. After the first two semesters, she continued her studies of modern German literature and philosophy in Freiburg, Basel and Strasbourg. She received her master’s degree in 1998 from the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität in Freiburg. In the years 2000–2004 she was the first Czech doctoral student at the Max-Planck Institute (MPI) for psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, where in 2004 she obtained her Ph.D. From 2005 to 2014, she worked as an assistant professor at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität in Heidelberg, where in 2013 she received a habilitation on language and cognition. Since 2014, she has been a professor of empirical and experimental linguistics with a focus on psycholinguistics and head of psycholinguistic laboratories at the Technical University of Dortmund. She has received numerous awards and scholarships for her research work. Barbara Mertins is married and has two bilingual children.