Interested in internationalization in higher education and plurilingualism, the focus of our previous Translinguam-Uni project was both on local and international students credit mobility, as other researchers have done. However, few studies on language policies have paid specific attention to the plurality and diversity of students in terms of inclusion at university. Also, to the best of our knowledge, this cohort is not explicitly mentioned in any higher education language policies implemented in Spain. The inclusion and equity dimensions in such language policies are missing even if state universities provide curriculum adaptations and psychological support. It is essential to work on the plurality of students to be represented if we want to guarantee their academic success at university contexts with increasing internationalization and plurilingualism.

In most universities, policies are developed in a top-down fashion by university governments and are not necessarily driven by sociolinguistic, acquisitional, and educational research. In 2004, Spolsky recommended bottom-up language policies, based on de-centered (Bojsen et al., 2023) research. With an interdisciplinary view, we will cast our scientific look onto the population of our interest by analyzing data from them and, then, meet our major transfer objective: to propose research-based recommendations for an inclusive higher education plurilingual policy.

This project aligns with Universitat Pompeu Fabra’s (UPF, from now on) strategic transdisciplinary initiative Planetary Wellbeing, whose primary goal is to increase knowledge and understanding of the set of complex, interrelated and systemic issues affecting the wellbeing of humans, animals and the planet itself. It also lines up with other foreign universities like University of Limerick and its Wisdom for Action Research Strategy (2022-2027) with an Inclusive Society pillar.